$175.5 Million Opening Weekend For The Rise Of Skywalker! [UPDATED!]

UPDATE: the estimates for the 3-day opening weekend are in! The Rise of Skywalker has a $175.5 million opening weekend which is at the lowest end of industry estimates and is the upper limit of my previously posted own estimates based on YouTube trailer views!

While this is a very strong opening, the question is if Disney will be ultimately happy with the lowest opening for any of the sequel trilogy movies. The Last Jedi made about $45 million more on its opening weekend in 2017. Click through for the original story!

Opening Weekend Box Office for the sequels and stand alone movies:

• The Force Awakens: $248 million ($269.1 million in 2019 dollars)
• The Last Jedi: $220 million ($230.9 million in 2019 dollars)
• The Rise of Skywalker: $175.5 million
• Rogue One: $155 million ($166.1 million in 2019 dollars)
• Solo: $84.4 million ($86.5 million in 2019 dollars)

As of now The Rise of Skywalker’s box office is 23% lower (adjusted numbers!) than for The Last Jedi. If that trend continued then The Rise of Skywalker would end up making just $475 million, much less than Rogue One even. But The Last Jedi had a huge 2nd weekend drop, so The Rise of Skywalker may gain ground!

The Cinemascore is also in! And it’s not too good. It’s only a B+! B+ may sound good, but as far as Cinemascores are concerned it’s already just mediocre, “A” movies usually have the best box office, better even than “A+” (because niche audiences sometimes gushingly praise a niche movie that is nothing for general audiences), and “A-” is still fine, but with “B+” we’re entering the territory of movies which often underperform or disappoint at the box office. The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and Rogue One all had an “A” score. Even Solo managed to get an “A-“, this makes “The Rise of Skywalker” the Disney Star Wars movie with the worst Cinemascore.

Other B+ movies are “Terminator Salvation”, “The Green Hornet”, “The Lone Ranger”, “Transformers Last Knight”, “Edge of Tomorrow”, “Superman Returns”, “MiB 3”, “Need For Speed”, “Fifty Shades Darker”, “Ted 2” or “Justice League”, to name a few. You usually don’t want to be associated with movies like these when you want to have a huge success at the box office.

The average total box office multiplator for B+ movies is about 3.16, i.e. the opening weekend multiplicated by this value gives you the total domestic box offce, with that the movie will just about reach $553 million domestic, a very good result still, but still only the least successful sequel trilogy movie and barely ahead of Rogue One. Now word of mouth by general audiences will have an effect, of course, and may give the movie longer legs than The Last Jedi. The 2nd weekend will tell us more!

A while ago I wrote an article about Cinemascores and box office results. The most successful B+ movie on my list made just $402 million domestic, which was Transformers Revenge of the Fallen. I believe The Rise of Skywalker will certainly make more. So it will be on the very upper end of B+ movies. But with a B+ score it is almost impossible to reach The Last Jedi.

We have to wait a bit to say something about worldwide box office, but one thing is certain, the movie has to make its money outside of China. The movie is tracking for the worst opening weekend of all the Disney Star Wars movies in China. The Rise of Skywalker is projected to only make $18 million total in China, based on Friday numbers. Which is once more a complete failure.
So worldwide box office will once more have to rely on the legacy markets in the UK, France, Germany, Australia and Japan. It could be a close race between Rogue One and The Last Jedi at the worldwide box office. But we will know more in a few days!

Source: Box Office Mojo

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