ST Episode IX Box Office Discussion

Knives Out is a blast. Well-written, well-directed. A coherently unified Rian Johnson-written-and-directed sequel trilogy would have been better than a Rian Johnson plot warring with the JJ Abrams plot. Lesson learned hopefully.

Unsurprisingly, it looks like Frozen 2 and Rise of Skywalker are going to have no problems bouncing Captain Marvel and Toy Story 4 from the top 5 worldwide films of 2019. The Top 10 list of 2019, worldwide seems locked in now:

3 Disney animated features (including Lion King)
1 Disney live action remake
1 Disney Star Wars
3 Marvel comic movies (2 Disney Marvel, 1 Disney Marvel-produced)
1 DC comic movie
1 Jumanji sequel (unless this movie is a flop and F&F spinoff can hold on)

An unprecedented year for Disney studio market share. 2 top 10 hits for Sony, 1 for WB

 

rather rian Johnson directed all three sequel movies or JJ or anybody, I believe we would still be in this mess bc, A large faction of fans didnt want the OT characters to be messed with at all. So there was always going to be a divide in my opinion. I heard two posters on this forum say, that the OT characters should not have had any dirt or drama on them at all, they should have lived happy ever after, and Im like then how do you make these OT characters interesting and not glorified cameos, bc that would also make the fans mad. I can see the topics now, "who are these new characters, I dont care about them I came to see luke, leia and han on the falcon again." If this is truly a 9 episode arc, than there was going to be some dirt on the OT characters, and that would have always caused a divide in the fandom

 

but still: top 5 movie of 2019 worldwide! Probably top 3! Possibly top 2! Place or show are solid bets with a low payout.

 

I would not bet on it being in top 5 of 2019, but there is actually a Playmobil movie coming out this weekend. Totally under my radar comes the heroes of my childhood of toys. Second only to Star Wars. They really need a billion dollar episode movie franchise!

 

I feel like when we talk about this movie on box office we mostly talk about how people reacted to TLJ. But I still think that at the end the reaction to this movie will play a much bigger role in BO performance than TLJ.

 

Right. Thought about it. Its time for nostalgia, once again, and you can not escape it. Its good or evil, or both and it gets everywhere...like sand. Return of the Jedi was the first movie i was allowed to watch in the theatre. It opened in the US on May 25th, 1983. The same week as David Bowie topped the Bilboard Hot 100 with Lets Dance. ROTJ opened to a then record weekend of $23,019,618 and a total domestic gross of $252,583,617 in its original release. The1997 Special Edition made over $ 89 mill WW, which is almost the double of what the 2019 version of Charlies Angels has made. I have so many memories and personal stories about this movie, that will make me cry - so i won`t bore people with that, rather than saying the movie is not perfect by any accounts, but one hell of a entertaining blockbuster. Here are some obscurities i found on YouTube from the premiere days in 1983( US and Australia).

 

The multiple directors idea since it was done with the OT despite the fact that the story was all George was just the dumbest thing Disney did with the ST. They could have had multiple directors if they wanted then they should have used GL's script not saying it would have been good or bad and had Kasdan work on it with him to make them the best they could be but 3 directors each telling their own part of a trilogy was just plain stupid.

 

You're looking at things very starkly. There's a middle ground between messed up Luke who's a miserable oaf who tried to kill his own nephew, gave up helping the galaxy, and wants the Jedi to end .... Luke is a golden Force god who should flip backwards over tie-fighters before eating breakfast every day.

Most people upset at the way the OT3 were handled - that I've come across - come down to

A: Not even a brief onscreen reunion
B: No Jedi Order, even in some small sense
C: Luke trying to kill his own evil nephew and then giving up
D: Han back to being his ANH old self.
E: Leia being blamed for abandoning Ben as a child, which had a big part in Ben becoming Kylo.
F: No relationship between Luke and Rey and no baton passing.

Very few people, if any, wanted Luke who could throw Star Destroyers into the sun, or raise an entire Sith fleet with lightning out of space icebergs. People just wanted consistency. The ST isn't a natural continuation of the OT3 characters. It either sets them back to where they were in ANH (because TFA is a rehash of ANH), or it changes them in drastic ways where we'er left asking 'what the hell happened?, to which answers are barely given on screen.

 

There's no going back and changing it, and no obvious viable path for Episode 9 to reconcile the inconsistencies of Episodes 7 and 8. Realistically all we can expect from 9 is Abrams style visual spectacle, plenty of emotional content, and a breakneck pace to paper over a chaotic and unconvincing conclusion to a chaotic and unconvincing narrative arc.

That should be enough for really big box office.

It's not going to break any Star Wars box office records, or any major box office records. It will do better than Rian Johnson Star Wars simply by returning to the cinematographic style of TFA, which just looks better on the big screen. TFA has the redeeming quality of being absolutely beautiful to look at. TLJ was missing that.

 

Frozen (2013) $108.3M made in its first 10 days of wide release minus the 5 days of limited release in 1 theater ($109.4M with it included)
Frozen II (2019) $288.8M made in its first 10 days of wide release
Toy Story 4 (2019) $238.7M made in its first 10 days of wide release
Finding Dory (2017) $286.3M made in its first 10 days of wide release
Incredibles 2 (2018) $349.8M made in its first 10 days of wide release

The numbers are skewed a bit because Frozen only had 1 wide weekend in that number while Frozen II has had 2.

 

Bottom line is that going into TROS, you don't have a sense of intrigue or lingering questions or cliffhangers. Snoke was intriguing in TFA but gone in TLJ. Rey's parentage was intriguing in TFA but ended in TLJ. What Luke was going to do was intriguing in TFA but gone in TLJ.

So, what's JJ to do? Build that missing intrigue with the teasers and trailers for TROS. I wished they could do a better job with presenting the mysteries in those teasers and trailers. But from what I gather, that mystery and intrigue WILL be built into the plot of TROS as if to get people's minds OFF of any disappointments in TLJ. If he can do that, then TROS will pick up and move forward, creating its own cliffhangers, mysteries to be solved, and deepening the stories cut short in TLJ. All the while (somehow in 2 hours, 20 minutes) answering all of that.

 

I'm actually surprised by how many people like the look of TFA. It's got over saturated faces and I think it is the most generic of all the films.

 

Assume Frozen 2 never catches up to Incredibles 2 domestically, it will still more than compensate on the international side, for at least $1.3 billion worldwide.

Speaking of Incredibles, I wish we were talking about Frozone 2 instead of Frozen 2.

 

My favorite Luke moment is his first lesson for Rey. It's 100% the Luke I wanted to see in the ST. And it fits right in between those two extremes you outlined.

 

Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi

Adj. Lifetime Gross

$850,140,210

Can't see TROS doing this but gosh it would be nice

 

Probably the last one I'll bother doing for the month.

 

When did any of the bold ones happen? Also, Luke can still pass the baton. Honestly sounds like what is happening in IX. Except it is both Luke and Leia.

 

$850,140,210 is the lifetime gross for Return of the Jedi including re-releases like the very profitable Special Edition in 1997.

Not sure how to get Adj. Gross for individual releases on the Box Office Mojo..... By my math...

On it's initial release in 1983 Jedi made $252,583,617 - in 2019 ticket sales that's roughly:

$722,469,300

Can't really see TROS doing that either but it's less steep than $850 million.

 

The short answer is it didn't it is a made up lie. the only one that might be semi true is Han. yes he did go back to being a smuggler which I think is very in line with his character. It would be more hard for me to believe that he would be a senator's husband. the whole time in the ot han really wanted nothing to do with the Rebellion he just wanted to protect his friends. he is a free spirit who marches to the beat of his own drum. I didnt see him ever being a general in the army for long.

 

But even Han isn't his ANH old self. Sure he went back to smuggling. But he's not the same person we saw in ANH that needed a reward or payment to get him motivated.

 

Not even the Luke thing is necessary correct. The «Rashomon effect» used in TLJ for that particular scene is open to interpretation, thats the whole point of it. If you are obsessive about a character, and you start nitpick everything, most peoples mind will be affected in a negative direction. Thats my view.

The negativity has been neverending in here lately, despite that great pre party mood effect from The Mandalorian. I regret reading some of the TROS leaks now and that i was dragged into the discussion before watching the movie itself. I am not really a schadenfreude type of guy - yes it would be fun for TROS to make dope at the box office and take the «shove it up your face» mentality - but for me, i start loose interest in anything Star Wars when discussion is blindly negative. Which is something i would have guessed fans who are really put off by the ST would also be, at some point. You loose interest. Very strange.

Anyway...there is no news on the box office at the moment, and i don`t think there will be anything substantial until the L.A premiere night and we get a feel about audience reaction. Which then lead us into the review embargo being lifted, and further: A more true reaction from the wider audience, starting on Wednesday December 18th.

IF worth anything, a positive surge has been seen by serious pre sales trackers over the last days - for the movie to break out for real - and go way above $ 200 mill, it will need more, just because its Star Wars, does not mean it will sell - we have seen that since 1999 more or less. Based on the leaked story and visuals from the trailers/ tv spots, i suspect it will, that the bigger audience will like this.

 

Keep in mind @Jedi_Sith_Smuggler_Droid that $252 million+ Jedi made in 1983 would been good enough for fourth all time behind Jaws, ET, & A New Hope with Raiders of the Lost Ark I believe fifth. If TROS makes $722 million domestically that would ironically put it fourth all time behind The Force Awakens, End Game and Avatar therefore $722 million+ domestically would be a really good haul. Matter of fact anything above $700 million would be really good since it would beat out Black Panther for fourth all time domestically.

Going back to the 83' ROTJ numbers, just shows you the power of Star Wars back then. It made more then the #2 & #3 movies (Terms of Endearment & Flashdance) combined that year. No other film series, not even MCU can match the height of Star Wars from 1977-1983. That type of dominance will never be duplicated again.

 

I agree. At first the leaks made me scratch my head, but imagining its context I am very excited to see it. But instead of the typical "countdown to release-my body is so read" it has become a drag. To me it's more the nitpicking.

This is it, folks. The last episodic film is upon us in less than 3 weeks. Time to embrace!

 

Great points. There will never be anything like those orignal films again.

How amazing is that The Force Awakens made more adjusted for inflation than all the Star Wars films except A New Hope. And Rogue One made more than Revenge of the Sith.

 

I was just on YouTube and we literally have I say 15 videos breaking down the facial expressions of the cast as they are asked about what they think of the last movie. it's the most hilariously ridiculous thing I've ever seen