Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a hit at the worldwide box office but if Disney is expecting a significant boost from China, they may want to think again. As of right now, the sequel is being beaten by Chinese comedy The Ex-File 3: The Return of the Exes which opened a week ago. This probably shouldn't come as a major surprise, though, as the last two Star Wars movie underperformed in the country as well.
The Last Jedi made $560,000 in midnight previews which is significantly behind the $2.5 million The Force Awakens landed in 2015. It's also a long, long way behind The Fate of the Furious' record $8.7 million. Projections for today show that the Rian Johnson helmed sequel will likely make $5 million compared to The Ex-File 3's $11.6 million, a pretty surprising result when that's not a new release.
The Ex-File franchise revolves around ex-girlfriends enacting revenge on their ex-boyfriends and the movies ironically make fun of Star Wars with their titles. The main problem, however, is that Chinese audiences simply haven't embraced Star Wars since 2015 and their interest is rapidly falling. On the plus side, The Last Jedi has so far made $1.11 billion worldwide so the series is still doing very well.