The long range box office predictions for Disney and Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker have been revealed.
Box office tracking website Box Office Pro predicts Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will have an opening weekend between $185 million and $225 million. They also predict the film will have a domestic total gross between $550 million and $750 million.
They are definitely giving themselves some leeway as those are both pretty large ranges. Box Office Pro explains the wide gap between their low and high numbers, “When discussing potential grosses of this magnitude, it’s important to note that expectations are volatile on a scaled level and highly dependent upon ultimately reception and sentiment.”
They do predict, “the average projection across all models indicates this will be another major blockbuster for the franchise.” They back up this statement noting, “Early ticket sales are remarkably strong, with similarities to Rogue One and The Last Jedi‘s upfront demand landing on point with our expectations.
The predictions fall in line with what Star Wars: The Last Jedi made. Rian Johnson’s film had an opening weekend gross of $220 million. It would go on to earn $620 million total at the domestic box office.
If you compare the film to The Force Awakens, the prediction numbers are significantly down. The Force Awakens had an opening weekend gross of $247 million. It would go on to earn $936 million at the domestic box office.
Outside of the sequel trilogy, the predictions are higher than Rogue One. Rogue One earned $155 million in its opening weekend. It would go on to earn $532.1 million at the domestic box office in total.
And it’s much higher than Solo: A Star Wars Story. Solo had an $84.4 million opening weekend. It would go on to earn only $213.7 million at the domestic box office.
What might be interesting to note is that while Box Office Pro predicts somewhat similar box office grosses to The Last Jedi, they note in their prediction that the third film in Star Wars trilogies usually performs stronger than the second in the trilogy.
“As a rule of thumb, Star Wars trilogies have developed an emerging pattern in the only two sample cases: the first film establishes major, benchmark-setting numbers and proves to be the highest grosser of its trio, the second film declines significantly and generates the lowest attendance of that respective trilogy, and the third film rebounds for a second-best performance.”
This statement doesn’t actually align with their predictions. The high end of their opening weekend prediction is only $5 million more than The Last Jedi’s actual opening weekend.
On top of that, The Rise of Skywalker would also have to perform higher than the median in their total domestic box office gross prediction in order to continue to support this idea.
What do you make of these box office predictions for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker? What are your predictions for the movie?