ST Episode IX Box Office Discussion

I think the following few things have to happen for EP9 to bounce back :

1. Mark Hamill ( Luke Force Ghost ) must happen - extended cameo at least ( a bit like yoda in TLJ )
2. JJ has to make a great movie & not as divisive as TLJ
3. JJ need to close out the trilogy with all the answers & fans happy
4. Rave critic reviews & all round good reviews
5. That fans & general audience have somewhat forgotten about TLJ backlash & Solo's box office disaster
6. 18 months is good period for no Star Wars movies & wets the appetite
7. KK doesn't fire someone
8. No extensive re-shoots
9. Does not go way over budget
10. Great marketing campaign

I think if all of the above play out then we will see EP9 bounce back to something like $1.4 billion but after Solo even $1.1 billion would be satisfying.......

 

The biggest thing for Episode 9 is that it cannot have negative news coming from camp. Directors fired, scenes gone to crap, etc. What the story is, is anybodies guess and adding or fixing Luke is not going to work. The movie has to be epic, grand, full star wars event. It is still not going to be branded true star wars. Thanks to the debacle of TLJ and Solo's tanking, plus new information revealed in the book that showed what Lucas would have done, you'll see a real return love to the original 6 movies. If and when the original 6 movies get re-released at the box office, expect them to make a bit more money has homages to the true star wars from the real star wars maker.

 

Well... you already have one fired director who has made passive aggressive tweets, a release date pushback, and a hastily written script, so Episode IX is looking good.

 

But the general public has no clue about these things. The only way the public would care is if the negatives are posted all over the front pages of media outlets. If the media is anti-SW and harps on any negative that comes about, they will essentially be the ones driving it into the ground.

 

I predict 900 million.

 

Worldwide? That seems low. Domestically? That seems high.

 

WW

 

There's a very strong chance that Incredibles 2 will end up higher domestically than what SW IX will have domestically.

With a new projection at a ridiculous $182 million, a very low 3.00X will give I2 a domestic total of $546 million. Now, with the huge expected opening, I don't see I2 getting the multiplier that most other Pixar/Animated films get (usually around 3.4-3.6X). But I don't expect it to be lower than a 3.0X. Not with the HUGE excitement, continued kid viewings that includes summer camp groups, it being the ONLY kid film this summer, and attracting those who were kids in 2004 as well as teenagers. Add to that the superhero mania right now. A 3.2X (still low for this genre) gives it an insane $582 million domestic gross.

That being said, my 7 year old daughter saw it and was scared. She's hypersensitive. She went with some little friends of hers and one of their moms and dads. We were going to take her tomorrow but now she doesn't want to see it again. So apparently, it's a bit intense for little ones and family ratings are saying 8 or 9 and above. Not that it will really affect the numbers. If anything, that will only cause the 8-17 age group to want it more and the 11-17 age is where parents can drop kids off in groups, leave them, and then pick them up without worrying about sex, language, and gore in films.

 

Well I sure hope KK doesn't fire anyone else......

 

Wow it's getting pretty lonely around here for those who liked talking about the box office. The JC Community thread doesn't see much activity and the Solo thread got locked with no hope for it to open up. And I guess this IX thread isn't the place to discuss box office in general.

 

@jedijax are you really surprised that more people aren't jumping into talking about the box office when the TLJ and Solo box office threads became such cesspools? If people cut down on the hyperbole and 'TLJ ruined Star Wars type of comments' I'm sure more would be willing to join in.

 

I think a killer trailer for episode IX will get the fan base excited again. Not sure how the general public will respond. Some may take a wait and see attitude.

 

It'll bomb. No one will go see it. It'll be the first film to not make any money on opening weekend. Everyone will be too busy hanging out at my mansion and playing laser tag.

 

Yeah also a lot is going to be happening between now and when the movie comes out. Two brand new tv series, star wars celebration, plus probably quite a few new announcements. There is going to be plenty to build up the hype train for star wars again. Trying to release a movie just a few months after the previous star wars flick probably was never a good idea. They couldn't even properly advertise their new Star Wars movie because they were still going through the advertisement campaign of their previous Star Wars movie.

 

Less than $546 million for IX seems a bit low. I expect it will probably do at least in the same ballpark as VIII and possibly more (but not reaching $700 million).

 

Episode 9 will perform great at the domestic box office. I would be shocked if it didn't cross 600 million. Foreign box office is the big question mark.

 

Even more spectacualr than I2's $180 million OW, Wrinkle in Time saw over a 1000X increase and made $100 million !!!!

 

I don't really but that though. Spiderman Homecoming came out on July 7, then Thor Ragnarok came out on November 3, then Black Panther February 16. That's four months in between each MCU entry and they were all very successful. Solo had four months from TLJ to build up hype. I think Episode 9 will do fantastic domestically but its poor performance can't just be blamed on a lack of time in between releases when that hasn't hurt the MCU. That may speak to a weakness of the brand.

 

1) that's true for the fans, and probably that's what we'll, but i doubt it matters much to to the general audience

2)The definition of a great movie is highly subjective. It's gonna be a hard task to please most of the fans (and withouth sacrificing a good story or risk-taking concepts)

3) Except for Snoke -and i dont think we'll learn more- we know the answers to all the questions (rey's parents/luke's exile/etc..) What we dont know is the outcome of this story.

4) I hope so!

5) I really dont think the GA cares about it. End of a trilogy. Must see. For those who arent exciting by it the word of mouth will play a major role, good or bad.

6) agree

7) fingers crossed

8)9)10) i think we're gonna be fine with these points.

 

In a weird way, I am glad that the movie A Wrinkle in Time made it to a hundred million dollars. I know, I know, the movie was an acid trip but it wasn't that bad. Okay it was bad. Solo is a movie that will be debated for a while, probably more so than TLJ, because the regular fans didn't care for it, the fan base for the most part found it good (me included), but the marketing, the vibe was just not there. On one end, okay, even Star Wars can have a bust, because Marvel had theirs with the Hulk movie. But the true question here is can Star Wars in the future, with the expanded ladened effects movies that are coming out now almost all times of the year allow for a small character type piece? The Solo movie will bring everyone at Lucasfilm and Disney to evaluate their product and their directions they want to take. If you don't agree with me on this, just think for a minute. Marvel has films planned all the way up to 2025, with Star Wars, we really don't know the direction its going to go and take. Yes, we have Episode 9, the anime star wars resistance show, the new tv live action series, the trilogy coming from RJ which we know nothing about as well as a set of movies from the Game of Throne guys which we also don't know nothing about. What phases or plan have we really seen? If anything, what have seen is a sacrifice of story (Arnedt) in TFA just to get a movie out quick. Then with TLJ, RJ didn't change anything even after knowing that Carrie Fisher died, so in essence, the movie stayed the way it was and now the third one has to come up with a way to justify why Leia ain't there and it can't be cheesy or boy the fan base alone will rip it.

Incredible 2 opened up phenomenally and soon Jurrasic World 2 is coming up next week. Solo is getting close to the 200/150 split. Its not good at all, but I'll take anything right now. I think the movie needs about what? $400 million to break even. So anything closer to that mark the better.

 

@vong333 Maybe SW doesn't work like Marvel? Maybe you don't have to plan everything 10 years ahead to make movies? Although they are certainly planning the next 10 years anyway. The fact that we don't know doesnt' mean they don't know, or that it matters. There was a time people were thinking one film at the time, that's wasn't for the worse...

 

I got a question did Solo get released in Japan yet? Also, we can say what we want about the China box office tanking, but according to box office mojo, China is behind the UK in box office gross for the movie, so while everyone else went south, those two countries delivered.

 

Unless JJ pulls out the stops to correct this farce it might even be less than Solo!
Though the Reylo fans might try to watch it even more to avoid that fate!
How long before they start promoting the new Star Wars anime series to try to counter this trend?

 

Maybe (probably) in its OW. But not overall. That's impossible. It's just not how the box office works. Less than $210 million domestic and/or less than $400 million WW would be a 67% drop from the previous. That's just not how things work.

Had Solo been released by itself, 10 years after ROTS, without any ST films coming out, I think that people would be satisfied with a $210 million domestic. When Batman Begins came out in 2005, it came 8 years after Batman and Robin, made $206 million-YES it only made $206 million. Its OW was $48 million. That's nearly impossible to comprehend now, but at the time, it wasn't so unbelievable. And it was regarded as an excellent movie. There was, at the time, no demand for such a film despite how immensely popular Batman has always been. The movie wasn't considered a flop by any means. And it was to be the launch of a whole new BM trilogy. Then, 3 years later, things went berzerk with TDK.

Solo, therefore, should have no real impact on IX. However, it's the context of Solo's "failure" that is alarming. It followed three immensely successful movies in the course of 3 years.

As for IX, it will probably make somewhere in the $500 millions domestic and $1-$1.2 billion WW. The OW will likely not break TLJ's number. TLJ came off the heels of two VERY successful and well regarded SW films and thus the OW was amazing. Then it dropped like a hammer. What happens after the OW is all about the film itself. What happens in the OW is at least partially the result of what came before it. Now, IX will be coming off the heels of at least questionable SW installments. And, as we've said, it has no specific hook other than being the last film in this saga. The OW could very well see a minimum of 88% drop from TLJ's OW and pull in less than $200 million in the OW.

But it's true that JJ is going to HAVE to pull off something absolutely amazing for it to attempt to keep up. If it's just a finale for the sake of a finale, it will see at LEAST the drops that TLJ saw.

TLJ saw a 12% drop in the OW from TFA despite the love for TFA. A similar drop gives IX $195 million. Not building from the anticipation from TLJ the way TLJ did from TFA may give it a bigger OW drop.
TLJ had a 2.82 X. With a $195 million OW, a 2.82X gives it a $550 million domestic.

 

Regarding 3......I believe there maybe more answers to Rey's parentage , I think JJ has more plans for this......