The Last Jedi top earner of 2017

And just like that, despite its polarized reception, Star Wars: The Last Jedi became the biggest film of 2017.

The third Star Wars film under the Disney banner has hit $517 million domestically just 17 days into its release, according to studio estimates Sunday. That vaults Last Jedi past another Disney movie, Beauty and the Beast ($504 million), according to Box Office Mojo.

Last Jedi ($1.04 billion) now sets its sights on surpassing Beauty and the Beast ($1.26 billion) in worldwide gross, too.

Since Disney jump-started the franchise in 2015, all three of its Star Wars films, including The Force Awakens ($2.07 billion) and Rogue One ($1.06 billion) have each hit the billion-dollar mark in global gross.

Last Jedi has the greatest reviewer-audience gulf among live-action Star Wars films on Rotten Tomatoes: a 91 per cent certified “fresh” critical score vs. a 51 per cent audience score. On Metacritic, the chasm is an 86 average critical score vs. a 4.6 (out of 10) user score. Writer-director Rian Johnson’s film is proving indomitable at the North American box office, though, grossing $52.4 million this weekend to edge out Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle ($50.5 million).

Powered by Pixar’s Coco and Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok, Disney has won seven of the year’s final eight domestic boxoffice weekends.

Disney/Lucasfilm’s next Star Wars release, Solo, is due to land in late May – Disney’s first summer release in the Skywalker saga.

Overall, the domestic box office topped $11 billion for the third straight year.