Frozen 2 is crushing it hard at the global box office. This past weekend, the Disney animated sequel crossed the $US 449.9 mark in North America and $US 875.3 million outside of North America for a $US 1.325 billion global tally. The film inched past the first Frozen ($US 1.27 billion) and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($US 1.30 billion) to become the 14th highest-grossing film of all time.
Frozen 2 is also now officially the highest-grossing animated film of all time. This is of course if we don’t consider Jon Favreau’s remake of The Lion King ($US 1.6 billion) an animated feature. After all, despite being entirely designed and rendered on computers, the film was billed as a “live-action” remake. Either way, Disney wins.
Frozen 2 is really making a splash outside of North America more than anything else. In fact, outside of North America, the film is performing far better than Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. In countries like Malaysia, Frozen 2 has grossed approximately $US 9.2 million (RM 37.8 million) compared to Rise of Skywalker’s $US 2.4 million (RM 9.86 million).
Speaking of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, after another holiday weekend, the film has made $US 450.7 million in North America and $US 468 million outside of North America for a global cume of $US 918 million. This continues the franchise’s roughly 50/50 box office split between North America and the rest of the world.
At this point, there’s no doubt in my mind that Rise of Skywalker will go on to gross the $US 1 billion mark, likely within the week. The question is, where does it go from there? I doubt that the film will make as much money as The Last Jedi ($US 1.33 million), but it will likely make slightly more than Rogue One ($US 1.05 billion).
While this shouldn’t be seen as anything less than a success, it’s also not the kind of numbers Disney was probably hoping to hit when they first launched the sequel trilogy with The Force Awakens. However, a drastic lack of interest by certain integral non-North American markets such as China (which has pretty much just washed the franchise off its hands) and the divided fan reaction towards the latter two saga films have affected the franchise’s position at the box office.
