Strong interest in Finland last weekend pushed 'Star Wars: The Phantom Menace' past $200 million in total overseas ticket sales, making it the first film of 1999 to leap that hurdle so far.
Although 'Wild Wild West' took some of the fire out of the Star Wars installment last week, knocking the space opera down to the number three spot in Variety's list of top-grossing films in Europe, 'Phantom Menace' still brought in $59.3 million worldwide.
By comparison, the film earned a round $50 million in the previous week for distributor 20th Century Fox and production studio Lucasfilm, which is owned by George Lucas, creator of the iconic series of science fantasy films.
Despite continued strong showings, 'Phantom Menace' is far from the top-grossing picture of all time. 'Titanic', also distributed by Fox in cooperation with Paramount, brought in at least $1 billion in ticket sales, of which $601 million came from the U.S. market. With its $413 million in domestic sales and $632 million worldwide, 'Phantom Menace' trails the doomed ship by a wide berth as only the third-biggest film in history.
Even in Finland, where the Star Wars film opened to raucous acclaim and an opening-weekend gross of $854,000, it failed to dethrone that nation's blockbuster first-weekend record set in 1996 by 'Independence Day'.
'Phantom Menace' cost Lucasfilm about $110 million to make. According to conservative industry estimates, it had already recouped all that money and more from merchandising and licensing fees long before it even hit U.S. theaters.
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