Star Wars Again Changes Position in All Time World Wide Box Office

When Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace hit the theaters back in 1999 it already was a huge success at the global box office, bringing in about 924 million dollars, which made it - despite mixed reviews and many criticism by Star Wars fans - behind James Cameron's Titanic number 2 in the (unadjusted for inflation) all time world wide box office.

Since then a number of very successful other films (James Cameron's Avatar, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Toy Story 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight) had overtaken Star Wars: TPM in this ranking, kicking it out of the symbolic top 10. But then early this year Star Wars: TPM got re-released in 3D having the opportunity to bring in some additional money. And so it did. Since the 3D re-release of Star Wars: TPM in early February this year the movie has banked a lot of extra money and had re-entered the all time world wide box office top ten some weeks ago by kicking out Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight and passing the one billion mark as only the eleventh film in history to do so. Now the movie again changed its position in the all time global box office. But instead of having fallen out of the top ten again it archived the improbable and brought in enough dollars to even re-overtake Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland ($1,024.3). So far the 3D re-release has brought in about 100 million extra dollars summing it total revenue up to 1024.8 million. With number 8 in the all time ranking Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ($1,043.9) being ahead additional 19.1 million dollars it is very unlikely that Star Wars: TPM will rise even further. Is it?

So the question arises - considering that Episode 1 is probably the least liked entry in the series and that it may originally have made that much money back in 1999 because people didn't know how it would be like but they did know this time when they went to see it at the big screen (again) - how much will the other Star Wars 3D re-release bring in and will Episode 1 after all 6 episodes will have been re-released in 2017 still be the most successful film in the series? How will the Star Wars internal ranking be in 2017?

And another question is with Marvel's Avengers, Christopher Nolan's final Batman entry and the long awaited Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey hitting theaters later this year how long do you think Star Wars: TPM will remain in the world wide all time box office top ten? What do you think? Make sure to share your thought at the usual place.