Weekend Box Office Predictions: Star Wars to Set Galaxy Ablaze

The Last jedi

This article could begin with a spiel about what the weekend looks like and how it’ll likely shape up, but that’s rock-stupid. Which is to say a new Star Wars movie is releasing (again, you knew this).

 

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Disney)

It’s heeeere. Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the highly-anticipated eighth episode in the space opera saga, is ready to blow your minds and drain your bank account. Hell, the only possible way The Last Jedi could be somewhat financially underwhelming is if it turned out to be a critical disappoi-

Well shit!

Disney has done a fine job reinvigorating Star Wars for the modern age. I mean, anybody with their marketing prowess could. It’s not like previous distributor, 20th Century Fox, had a global theme park presence and a mouse mascot to pair with merchandise. Funnily enough, Disney is expected to purchase this distributor, but that’s neither here nor there.

Point is, 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens was gigantic by any conceivable metric, shattering the opening weekend record with $247.97 million, nearly tripling the previous December opening high belonging to Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey ($84.62m). The Force Awakens, naturally, went on to slap James Cameron’s Avatar ($760.51m) out of its #1 highest-grossing movie ever in the U.S./Canada spot like it was nobody’s business, tallying a ridiculous $936.66m. Episode VII had to settle for third-biggest movie globally, but $2 billion is $2 billion and $2 billion don’t lie – Star Wars was/is cool again.

The big question, then, is how big will The Last Jedi be? It won’t eclipse The Force Awakens, let’s be clear. The Force Awakens’ gross was the product of three decades of hype, exacerbated when George Lucas’ prequels came out and people decided they’d much, much rather spend time with the original trilogy. So long as there was no dialogue mentioning sand, Episode VII would probably be a-okay. And it was! This, combined with the omnipresent Disney machine, created a remarkable cultural whirlwind. You could feel Star Wars in the air.

The Last Jedi, in comparison, is the third Star Wars movie in just as many years. Oh, there’s anticipation. We’re not going to remotely doubt that. But what Last Jedi will prove is how well a new Star Wars episode can perform relative to Force Awakens’ unprecedented event status. Last year’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story performed phenomenally, opening with $155.08m and hauling $532.18m domestically (#7 all-time)/$1.06 billion globally. Rogue One’s grosses are fantastic, yet it was -49% off from The Force Awakens. That wasn’t surprising, given Rogue One was a spin-off story and all. So, even if Last Jedi doesn’t do as strikingly well as Force Awakens, it has a lot of leeway regarding its ability to gross a metric ton of cash.

The Last jedi beaver thing
It may make up for it in porg money.

And it will gross a metric ton of cash. Even though The Last Jedi isn’t the most anticipated movie in recent history, if not all history, ala Force Awakens, there’s plenty going for it – the movie, judging from reviews, takes the Star Wars saga into new and unexpected directions (something Force Awakens got flack for not doing) and does it well. Luke Skywalker makes his grand return that isn’t a wordless stare. We get to spend more time with characters introduced in The Force Awakens who hold great potential and get to meet some new ones. The Last Jedi is also the final appearance of Leia, following Carrie Fisher’s unfortunate passing last December. The movie will be a chance for fans to say goodbye to an iconic character, perhaps multiple times.

An opening weekend between Rogue One and The Force Awakens equals $210m+, good for second-highest ever. That’s a reasonably plausible number, but it’s hard to pinpoint how large a movie will be when everybody’s aware it’ll be pretty large. A drop akin to Disney/Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron from its predecessor (-7.8%) gives Last Jedi a $228m+ haul. There’s quite a range here and Last Jedi’s promising acclaim should prevent a sharp drop-off from The Force Awakens, although “sharp drop-off” in this case is “every other studio would kill for this” in reality.

Prediction: $215 million, #1 rank

 

Ferdinand (Fox)

For the person in your life who reacts to Star Wars with a blank, dead-eyed gaze, there is Blue Sky Animation’s Ferdinand, starring a bull (John Cena) who gets into a whole bunch of antics, as they do.

Ferdinand is counter-programming at its most obvious, not that that’s a bad thing. Fox did something similar with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, opening Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip over the same frame. The Road Chip tallied $85.89m by run’s end and it was abhorrent, leading me to believe Ferdinand can and likely will perform marginally better. Being an adaptation of a popular children’s book doesn’t hurt either. Having no reviews and a meager 6.5/10 on IMDb (granted, from <300 scores, but still) does hurt, though.

There isn’t much to say about Ferdinand, honestly. It won’t make a dent in The Last Jedi and it sure as hell isn’t this year’s Sing ($270.33m), but it’s a kid-friendly animation based on known source material going into the Christmas season, and that might be good enough.

Prediction: $18 million, #2 rank

 

HOLDOVERS

COCO movie
© Disney•Pixar

3. Coco (Disney) – $12 million (-35%), $153.2m cume
4. Wonder (Lionsgate) – $5.9 million (-30%), $109.9m cume
5. The Disaster Artist (A24) – $4.45 million (-30%), $14.9m cume
6. Justice League (Warner Bros.) – $3.9 million (-60%), $219.6m cume
7. Daddy’s Home 2 (Paramount) – $3.55 million (-40%), $96.4m cume
8. Thor: Ragnarok (Disney) – $3.1 million (-50%), $306.5m cume
9. Murder on the Orient Express (Fox) – $2.8 million (-45%), $97.8m cume
10. Lady Bird (A24) – $2.25 million (-35%), $26.2m cume

As usual, thanks for reading. Check back on Monday for those sweet, sweet Star Wars box office results.

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