Rogue One Rogue One Box Office Discussion

didn't TFA tickets go on sale Oct. 19? I guess Disney is trying to make clear distinctions between Rogue One and the saga movies in its marketing campaign.

 

Latest word was ticket sales start early November, I think. Maybe they don't want to cut into Dr.Strange's sales by putting the focus on Rogue One right before that movie comes out.

As for the holidays. This year has probably the worst possible dates, while last year saw the best possible.

TFA:
- christmas eve on what is the weakest day of the week anyway
- time between opening weekend and christmas was short enough for many people to take them off
- 2nd weekend saw Friday get a boost because of christmas day

R1:
- christmas eve falls on the strongest day of the week, pulling that day down, Monday being a holiday doesn't save all that
- there is a whole week between opening weekend and christmas, meaning less people will probably be off at that time
- new years eve again falls on the strongest day of the week, hurting that weekend as well

It's still an excellent time to make a lot of money, but it's not nearly as good as the dates TFA had

 

Wait, are you saying they don't allow you to bring a simple bottle of water ?

 

Calendar looks nearly though not quite as bad for Episode VIII. Chrismas Eve/New Year's Eve fall on Sundays, which is better than Saturday, but not much. There are 2 holiday Mondays that will drive up box office and will compensate somewhat for the two poor Sundays. We can start talking about that in another 6 months.

 

Shockingly low predictions from this box office tracking site: http://pro.boxoffice.com/long-range-forecast-rogue-one-star-wars-story-collateral-beauty-space-us/

I don't see that at all! To say that Deadpool will end up having opened about the same as Rogue One, in an off month, I just don't see that. I think Deadpool set the floor for Rogue One's opening, personally. I don't see it opening to basically half the business TFA had, I mean that just doesn't sound realistic. And the fall from the cumulative being more than 50% down from TFA? I don't see that either.

I find it amazing how every time a Star Wars movie comes along, I feel like it has to re-prove the saga's endless appeal. It's obnoxious because when a Star Wars movie one day falters, even if that's 25 years from now, it'll be like, "Yeah, we saw this coming." No you didn't. The media has been wrong about virtually every Star Wars movie. TPM was called a bomb after it didn't beat Lost World's opening, and they were throwing dirt on it when it set a non-holiday Monday record, then an incredible 2nd weekend, and pretty soon it was on its way to becoming only the 2nd movie ever to make $400M on its first release. But by that point, a lot of people already had this view of TPM as some sort of box office disappointment when in fact it was one of the biggest hits of all time, in raw dollars and in ticket sales. Then when ROTS was coming out, it wasn't expected to be that big because it was PG-13, "everyone" hated the prequels (the biggest lie the media has ever told in the film industry), and there wasn't enough excitement for the final Star Wars movie, blah blah, etc. It broke a bunch of records on its way to being easily the highest grossing movie of the year.

Then we all know how TFA went, since so many people even here thought interest in Star Wars had dried up.

Here we are with Rogue One, where after TFA, I really thought Star Wars proved to every doubter that you simply don't underestimate Star Wars. I guess not. I guess we're going to be assaulted with excuses for 2 more months, "Well, there's no Luke and Leia and Han. Well, nobody knows these characters. Well, it's a spinoff. Well, people already know what happens." *sigh* I guess it's just another waiting game to watch Star Wars prove them wrong.

 

it's an important point. I definitely unequivocally thought interest in Star Wars had dried up before TFA starting selling advance online tickets like crazy.

And the Star Wars atmospherics from the Rogue One trailers are faultless. There's no mistaking this new movie if you've ever seen an OT film in any format in the last 40 years. The spinoff issue is insignificant in my view. It's Star Wars. Also, I think people will be eager to relive the opening weekend excitement from last year. That was just such a fun time hopefully even for casual fans.

So, opening weekend will be big. No doubt in my mind. Maybe not as big as TFA. Maybe Rogue One's foreign box office is bigger than TFA's. I believe that's possible even though not my first guess. I do think a U.S. box office decrease relative to TFA is inevitable.

 

There's a level of uncertainty around R1 because it really is untested ground. It's the biggest test yet of how the brand and iconography stand up outside of the iconic characters (excepting a brief appearance by Vader). Nobody wants to stick their neck out on this one.

 

BTW, Box Office Pro predicts a $135M USDOW and a final domestic gross of $405M for Rogue One: http://pro.boxoffice.com/long-range-forecast-rogue-one-star-wars-story-collateral-beauty-space-us/. I'll go with this. $405M domestically and $595M Overseas for $1B WW. I see it doing that.

 

Artoo-Dion

I agree. It's a unknown for being the biggest franchise in film history. It's going to do monster business! But how far that goes nobody I think really knows. If long term box office projections are correct and Rogue One tops out at a $400/1 billion+ split the Disney board will be doing cartwheels down Main Street again. Obviously it has the potential to do that but those numbers would be very solid for it.

Another boring weekend at the box office. News movies getting awful reviews except the horror movie which once again is proving to be the best bang for your buck in Hollywood that you can get:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4233&p=.htm

On a more positive note, trailer for Logan is up. Looks interesting:



Supposedly it is going to be R with a western type theme. Again interesting, much different then the comic book movies we been out lately. Hopefully it sticks that way. Wolverine Origins was brutal IMHO while The Wolverine was better but just okay overall. Hopefully this allows Hugh to go out with a bang.

Also the teaser trailer came out for GOTG2 came out this week:



If I had to rank the movies I am most excited for next year, I go

1. Episode VIII
2. GOTG2
3. Spidey: Homecoming

But there is so much more coming out that has my eyes peaked. Much more then this year. This year has been a dud overall.

 

I'm in agreement with you that Rogue One will do a $400MD/$1BWW split and that will satisfy Disney.

 

No, they want you to buy from concession stands, that's where they make most of their money. You can't bring in food or drinks.

 

first off, i dont care if you hate phantom menace, love phantom menace, or sleep with a jar jar binks doll....anyone who thinks that movie bombed is an idiot. that movie had huge legs. so anyone who thinks its wasnt a success either judges everything on OW or just hates star wars beyond reason.

second, i really think everyone is underestimating Rogue one.

i think 405 is a reasonable amount if it gets so so reviews and fan meh fan response. but i think it will go way higher then that.

 

I don't think it's more complicated than how good the movie turns out to be.

I think a lot of us who "bet long" on TFA hung a lot on the SWCA trailer and everything that came out about the movie afterward -- it looked like JJ not only got the look and overall "vibe" right, it looked like the performances were good and the characters were likable and engaging.

The buzz we started to get about TFA a few weeks before it opened was that it was quite good, and then we had the world premier, and then reviews started breaking and for a good part of opening day, it was at 100% on RT.

With R1, we just don't know how good it is, yet. My gut tells me this movie could very well misfire. Actually *writing* good Star Wars seems to be very hard -- only Lucas in collaboration with Huyck/Katz and Kasdan seem to know how to make it work. My great fear for this film isn't tone -- it's that they didn't get the characters/story right and couldn't get the script to pop (how many writers have been on this thing?) I love Rebels, but if the movie ends up like a big screen version of Rebels in terms of the characters & script, it's going to be in trouble.

 

I agree. I think the film could very well be a mess especially with all the reshoots they've done.

I'm hoping for the best though. Still going to see it, just hope it's not disappointing.

 

I really don't think it'll be some Suicide Squad disaster (and even that did well at the box office), but I think it may be like a lower level Marvel film with a boost from the goodwill generated by TFA.

 

i really think there's some revisinist history with the TFA stuff. i might have joined the day it came out but id been reading here a long time. even the people who thought they'd love it and ended up loving it inthe end were worried. about abrahms. about daisey. people thought the trailers meant the movie was going to depressing

i get that people are worried are worried the reshoots but the panic is overblown compared to what i've seen from the movie to date

 

I may be wrong, and probably will be, My prediction is that it will do as good or even slightly better at the box office than TFA... (assuming all the rewrites and reshoots worked out)

Felicity jones made a huge splash with "Theory of Everything" a couple of years ago and Riz Ahmed coming off the big HBO hit "The Night of" are hot commodities right now in Hollywood.. I have a feeling next month they are going to pump up the marketing something fierce

Not to mention a lot of "casual" Star Wars fans don't even know or care that Rogue one isn't following up TFA... I know a bunch of people who went to see TFA opening night, who have no clue about Star Wars...

 

Meh, who the F cares what the tracking is. They almost never predict correctly (at least in the past several years), especially for juggernauts like SW. Here's Deadline's tracking from the end of November of last year for TFA (so just a couple of weeks before the OW).

http://deadline.com/2015/11/star-wars-the-force-awakens-box-office-opening-estimate-1201636913/

$185M up to potentially $210M for the OW is what they predicted lol. A couple of months out and a $135M OW prediction for RO is a pretty good sign it's heading for at least a $150M OW (Probably much higher, $175M IMO).

 

My guess today is ~$160m OW, and $130m seems too low, but I really have no idea.

 

I think Rogue One can actually get things in reverse order, i.e. the box office takings from the worldwide markets will be higher than that for the USA... One big reason being the presence of two popular Chinese actors, which is a great way to draw China and Rest-of-Asia moviegoers to watch this first of the Anthology movies... As well as the movie being of an "unknown quantity" in a way, without any familiar characters save for Darth Vader, which may stop some die-hard fans from watching (let's hope I'm wrong though)!

And speaking of China, if a movie like The Mermaid (directed by Kung Fu Hustle star Stephen Chow) can make over $500m in their home market ALONE, what's stopping Rogue One from also getting at least half that figure? Because the increasingly globalized young Chinese people are becoming more aware towards Star Wars and as such, box office earnings there should beat that of TFA!


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I really don't see it. TFA made an enormous amount of money, and it had things going for it that Rogue One simply doesn't have. TFA continued the story, it brought back the big three, it was the first Star Wars movie in over ten years. It was the perfect storm last christmas. While the cast as a whole may be a bit more known for Rogue One than for TFA, having Ford, Fisher and Hamill more than makes up for that. Or should I say, having Han, Luke and Leia makes more than up for that. The Rogue One actors aren't really of the "I bring out movie-goers just because of my name variety". There simply aren't a lot of actors who are on that kind of level, and even those who are still don't turn every movie into box office gold. There are some excellent actors in the cast, who may bring in a bit of interest, but it's not like the general audience will go crazy just because they are in there.

As little as one can get out of these kind of numbers, Rogue One has been quite a bit behind TFA when it comes to trailer-views and internet chatter. While that doesn't tell you anything about the possible box office range of Rogue One, it is a pretty good indication that it won't match or top TFA. Then you also have to take into account that there usually is a drop for the sequels to the truly gigantic movies. ANH was beloved, it was an enormous success, yet ESB, which surely didn't suffer from a lack of quality, couldn't match it at all. For a direct sequel to match such a success would be unheard of, and Rogue One isn't even a true sequel, it lacks both the main characters of the main-saga (apart from a tiny bit of Vader) and the new main characters that had just been introduced.

Well, that isn't really reverse order, it's the norm
TFA was already a bit of an outlier due to its enormous domestic take, pushing the split to 45/55. There are only two other movies in the worldwide top 20 that made (slightly) more than 40% of the intake domestically, every other movies was in the 30s or even below that.

Though I agree that Rogue One might have a more "normal" split, both due to the USA not being such an extreme outlier, and the cast helping with certain international markets.

 

Star Wars continues to be everywhere in terms of media, news, products, etc. The R1 trailer has made a big splash. I don't think it is as "unknown" as one might think as far as it being a spinoff; I think SW is SW, and carries with it a huge amount of appeal. That appeal is greater than at any time right now aside from the mania that took place for the year or 2 after the release of ANH. There is a lot of room for optimism for box office,and IMO the same for the quality of the movie.

This movie will capitalize on the appeal of the previous SW movie in a way that has never been done; the excitement of TFA is still relatively fresh. It had always been at least a few years in between movies, so it will be interesting to see what effect that will have.

 

I understand that, but I'm surprised about water. What's next, you need to buy oxygen to see the film ? I live in Europe so it's probably different, but I've never been confronted to this issue. I always have a bottle of water on me anyway, whether I go to a movie theater or not.

 

It didn't matter that much before, because as long as it was out of sight (e.g. girlfriend's purse), they couldn't say anything even though it was against their rules. But we have had some theater shootings in the US, so now they search everything when you go in, and of course even though it is guns they are looking for and not food, if they find the food, they won't let you bring it in. I don't suppose they have the same problem in other parts of the world because they don't have the loony laws that allow so much unfettered access to guns in other places. It is ridiculous to have to get searched to go into a movie theater; I would assume you probably don't in Europe.

 

I've been searched before, but only when you have lot of people, like the evening screenings sometimes or TFA first days. But they didn't say anything about my water bottle (and I don't hide it). Now if it was for security reasons, like a bomb made out of liquid, I would understand a ban.