On the face of it, the numbers look good. The opening weekend is $175 million.
Now that is pretty impressive.
For anyone but Star Wars.
J.J. Abrams first outing had an opening weekend of nearly $250 million. Now that was kind of a special occasion of a movie. It had been ten years since the last Star Wars movie and Lucas had sworn he wasn’t making another one. And for once he was telling the truth.
The utterly detested Last Jedi’s opening of $220 million, is probably a better baseline for how well a Star Wars movie should be doing.
Disney has enough, more than enough, muscle that it can demand that theaters pack a middling performer onto a lot more screens than it would normally rate. And the numbers speak for themselves.
This is from Vox Day:
“Compare and contrast the per theater performance of the most recent excrescence with three other films:
- Avengers Endgame: $25,534 3-day avg, 43% decline from D1 to D3
- The Force Awakens: $19,994 3-day avg, 49% decline
- The Last Jedi: $17,328.67, 3-day avg, 51% decline
- The Rise of Skywalker: $13,278 3-day avg, 58% decline
In other words, despite Episode 9 opening to barely half of the Avengers finale, its audience is dropping off more rapidly. This points to a domestic box office that will be less than three-quarters of its predecessor, or around $450 million.“
For a film that has probably topped $600 million (if all of its costs were added up). It is seriously underperforming. Remember those raw numbers we see are the gross intake.
The first big chunk is from the theaters themselves. When The Last Jedi came out theaters were groaning in agony over all of the extra money they had to fork over to Disney, if they were going to show this film. I’m not hearing any complaints about that this time around, which means both sides knew that Mickey the Great and Terrible was in no position to make demands like that.
In summary: this film is not only making less money per screen it is making even less money per ticket holder, when Disney adds up the net total.
Foreign Box Office will look more impressive on the face of it, (even with bad numbers in China). But those numbers are a lot less impressive when you look at how much money ends up getting lost in currency conversion, in addition to foreign taxes and various extra-legal levies (aka: bribes) that have to be paid.
The real money remains in merchandising and this entire series of films has long since been a flop in that market. The reason for that is well known, kids still aren’t interested.
As I’ve said before, Star Wars was a little boy’s fantasy. You either wanted to be the space-cowboy smuggler or the starwizard-samurai or the mysterious galactic bounty hunter in the iron mask.
The one thing little boys don’t want to be is a girl.
The Dark Herald 
It’s kinda funny to watch how over the actors, the directors and Disney itself is with this series. The only one who’s making noise about the film from the studio is Rian Johnson…because he can’t grasp the idea that he is part of a team and is throwing a perfect example of a gamma sperg-out over the idea that his film wasn’t a masterpiece.
Star Wars isn’t dead….but I’m sure it will be confined to TV for a while…movie announcements be damned.
That’s not exactly a bad thing…the setting is more suited to TV now-a-days and Filloni can work on slowly rebuilding the lost trust over a couple of years. .
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Let’s see how I did with the predictions I made in the other thread:
“It’ll come in at around $500-$600 million in domestic BO and maybe $300-$400 million in FBO, for a total cume just under $1 billion.”
This thing will be lucky to bring in as much domestically as Solo did worldwide ($392.2 million). I figure the BO will drop off at least 50% next week even with people off for the holidays. A TLJ-level drop of 60+% or more would be even more awesome. I’ll say it ends between $600 and $700 million worldwide. Pretty good for any movie but, as our host noted, a flaming disaster for Star Wars.
“I feel like the soyboys, cucks, NPCs and SJWs will ‘storm out of their hives’ (to quote our host) because they’ll view it as ‘sticking it to the haters,’ which is the most important thing to them.”
I couldn’t have been more hilariously wrong here. The NPCs are PISSED over the double insult J.J. throwing Roundhead’s woke masterpiece under the bus (and backing over it repeatedly) and then catering to the “tiny vocal minority of hateful manbaby troll fans” instead of rightfully catering to the vast audience of NPCs like TLJ did. They’re throwing a full-on PC Babies tantrum over it. Woketards won’t save or support this one.
“There will be at least three amazing coincidences which move the plot forward but make absolutely zero sense (think marooning Kirk on Future Spock’s planet)”
Bang on.
“No explanation will be given for the Emperor’s resurrection.”
Bang on again.
“C-3PO will be deus ex machina’d back to life after his memory wipe.”
3-for-3 on the lack of plot.
“Plot points will be invented to justify Ma-Rey Sue, and she’ll stomp the Emperor without even trying.”
Right again.
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Yeah, the loudest defenders of the franchise for the past year have been the SJWs who think TLJ is a misunderstood masterpiece. They’re either attacking this one or saying nothing because they don’t want to be on the same side as the “toxic” fans they hate. Without their rabble-rousing, what support this one is getting is much quieter. General audiences who saw it because it was the only thing in the theater might enjoy it well enough as a popcorn action movie and tell a friend or two, but they won’t go online and beat the drum for it.
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“The one thing little boys don’t want to be is a girl.”
Whoa there, Tex! Slow down a little, that’s just crazy talk. Why do you think they invented puberty blockers? /s
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
Here’s hoping that the box office is so bad that a few of them decide to do the “honorable thing” and rid us of their wickedness and evil. Is that too dark? I can’t even tell anymore, some days.
Hope the healing/recovery process is going well, and you’re feeling better. Oh, and Merry Christmas to you and your family!
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Yep. And the ratio of guys mutilating themselves to try to pass as women, if (last I looked) 40 to 1 than gals going the other way.
It’s encouraging that so many little boys (and their parents) are resisting the SW propaganda.
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Bibliotheca Servare December 23, 2019 at 5:45 pm
Is that too dark?
over Star Wars? a brain child of George Lucas? you realize that Lucas hates you and would call you a nazi AND that he’s got a pedophilia fetish, right?
how about they do it because a bunch of them were friends with Epstein.
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@Bob
I figured that was a given, included under “their wickedness and evil”.
So far their association with Epstein, and their satanic, pedophilic tendencies haven’t driven them to seppuku, but maybe the blow to their pride over the catastrophic failure of the whole Star Wars revival will drive some of them to rid us all of their evil, because their pride matters more to them than their souls. I’m talking about the Devilmouse in general, not just the Star Wars folks. Of course it won’t, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing it would.
Yes, I know George Lucas hates me. Also, water is wet, and Hollywood is evil. I still enjoy the original Star Wars, regardless of what its creator thinks of me.
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BB-8 was a merch success, but I think it’s the only one. They tried for a repeat in TLJ, they no doubt tried again in this one, but I didn’t see either and didn’t even desire to see RoS, so there you are. Merch requires a story someone cares about.
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Or something really cute. Witness Baby Yoda.
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