The third Star Wars trilogy is officially concluded. It's always hard to determine how well-received a movie actually is. Critics are often wrong about their assessments and the general public can warm up to certain movies after a bad first reception. But when we’re looking at the numbers and box office returns, one thing is very certain - Rise of Skywalker is the most underwhelming main Star Wars movie to date.
The Star Wars Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker, or RoF as we'll call it from now on, had the weakest box office opening of any of the new Star Wars movies. According to Box Office Mojo, the movie made $363 on its first weekend, short of the $450 million experts were projecting.
The previous movie in the franchise, The Last Jedi, grossed $450 million, while the first movie, The Force Awakens, made $528 million on its opening weekend. So, the drop of around $100 million in the opening is a trend with the Disney Star Wars sequels.
Of course, movies can pick up after a disappointing premieres. As of time of writing, Rise of Skywalker had two weekends at made $724. Considering the film’s budget is put at $275 million, that seems like a huge win.
But the movie business isn't that simple. First of all, the marketing budget of the movie should be at least $100 million, similarly to The Last Jedi. That would make the overall budget $375 million. Then, we must consider that the movie theaters usually keep around 50% of the ticket profits. But with Disney, the contract is usually different and most theaters that screen the Last Jedi had to give 65% of the ticket sales profits to Disney.
If we assume that Disney kept the same deal, we can calculate that so far, The Rise of Skywalker made Disney around $470 million against an estimated budget of $370 million. That may seem like a lot to the average viewer, but it's actually a vast underperformance considering the name recognition.
