It may be a tale as old as time, but it’s a tale that’s bringing in a lot of green at the box office.
Disney announced today that their live-action redo of Beauty and the Beast has crossed the $1 billion mark in worldwide ticket sales. This makes it 2017’s highest grossing film so far and it officially becomes the highest grossing live-action musical feature of all time, unadjusted for inflation.
Beauty and the Beast debuted on March 17 and broke box office records when it opened to $174 million (highest opening of all time for the month of March) and as of this writing the film has grossed $435.9 million domestically. In terms of live-action musicals, Beauty and the Beast easily bests Grease’s pre-inflation total of $188.8 million domestically. On the worldwide chart, only Disney’s own Frozen (the world’s best musical performer to date) has surpassed Beast with a gross of $1.3 billion.