https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottm...-drops-69-tops-100m-losers-club/#12e25998dc05
Box Office: 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Drops 69%, Tops $100M Losers Club
The good news is that
Star Wars: The Last Jedi set another box office record. The bad news is that it’s not a “good” record but a pretty “bad” record. To wit,
The Last Jedi topped the holiday box office with another $68.5m. That’s a sharp drop of 68.8%, which is not good for a big movie opening just before Christmas. But it’s about on par with
Eragon, which also fell 68% after a $23m launch. I keep bringing up that
Star Wars knock-off, starring John Malkovich… as Snoke!, because 2006 was the last time that Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday and Christmas Day, fell on a Monday, which is absolutely skewing the holds and overall numbers heading into the heart of the holiday season.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II fell 72% in its second weekend, while even
Alien: Covenant (which also had the buffering of Memorial Day in its second weekend) fell 70% while
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk dropped 77% over Thanksgiving in its second weekend of wide release. Now, when discussing
Star Wars, you don’t necessarily want to be discussing reasons why the drop isn’t “that bad.” However, the film has already amassed a ridiculous amount of money in a relatively short time. Moreover, it’s a coin toss as to whether it will make up for some lost ground (compared to the likes of
The Avengers and
Jurassic World) once every kid is now off for the duration of the Christmas/New Year’s break.
So, here’s the indisputably lousy news: Rian Johnson’s
Star Wars: The Last Jedi lost more money between its first and second weekends than any film ever, by a lot. Walt Disney’s
The Last Jedi made $151 million less between its two weekends, which is way above the $121m gap from
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($169m/$42m) back in 2011 and more than
Force Awakens' second ($149m) Fri-Sun weekend back in 2015. I’ve written from time to time about the $100m+ losers club, which is a still-rare group of films that opened so high and then dropped so hard that they made over $100m less on their second weekend than their first. Well, thanks to
The Last Jedi, we’re going to have to open a $150m+ losers club right next door.
The $100 million+ losers club now has eight members, including
The Last Jedi,
Harry Potter 7.2,
Batman v Superman ($166m opening weekend/$51.3m second weekend = $114.7m difference),
Avengers: Age Of Ultron($191.3m/$77.2m = $114.1m),
Captain America: Civil War($179.1m/$72.6m = $106.5m),
Jurassic World($208.8m/$106.5m),
The Avengers ($207.7m/$103m = $104m) and
Iron Man 3 ($174.1m/$72.5m = $102m). After that you get the "not-quite $100m" members, such as
The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($142m.84m - $42.87m = $99.97m),
Star Wars: The Force Awakens - $247.9m/$149.2m = $98.7m and
The Dark Knight Rises ($160m - $62m = $98m). The last two
Twilight films lost $98m ($141m/$43m for
Breaking Dawn part II) and $97m ($138m - $41m = $97m for
Breaking Dawn I respectively).
The last four "minus-$90 million" members are
The Hunger Games ($152m - $58m = $94m) and
Spider-Man 3 ($151m - $58m = $93m),
Suicide Squad ($133m/$41m = $91m) and
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - $155m/$64m = $91m. What you’ll notice about these films is that they all posted huge opening weekends and either went on to be among the biggest grossing movies of all time or hit a wall at a total that
The Last Jedi will soon surpass relatively quickly.
The Last Jedi has now earned $366m and will be just under $400m domestic by the end of tomorrow. Unless it receives essentially zero uptick from the holiday season, it should end the year with over/under $465m domestic.
A gross well-and-above the $529 million domestic total of
Rogue One is absolutely assured. A gross well-and-above $600m is all-but-guaranteed. Anything above that is highly dependent on the next two weeks as it does its best to take advantage of the holiday moviegoers alongside a lot of family fare. If it merely has the same Tues-Thurs uptick as
Rogue One did (plus around $30m on Christmas Day), then it’ll enter its third weekend with $460m with a likely 17-day total of over/under $500m and a possible over/under $525m total as 2018 begins. Again, there is a lot of wiggle room, but most movies playing in this part of the year do better in their second Mon-Thurs chunk than their first.
The Last Jedi has already made 1.66x its opening weekend after ten days. That compares to
Eragon (1.61x),
Hobbit 1 (1.77x), (
Hobbit 2 (1.77x) and
I Am Legend (1.77x). So, no, this isn’t a
Star Trek: Nemesis (1.43x after ten days, after a 76% weekend drop) situation. If it plays anything like
Eragon over the next week, which is a bit optimistic, then a $700 million+ total isn’t out of the cards. Even a
Nemesis-type run at this point gets it to $605m domestic. So yeah,
The Last Jedi lost this weekend, but it doesn’t have to like it. The Lucasfilm sequel still has plenty of time to reassert itself before the new year begins for real on January 12, 2018.
We can debate the reasons, be it the excess kid-friendly competition, mixed word-of-mouth among the faithful, the skewed holiday calendar and/or the lack of the new-ness. Perhaps
The Last Jedi is a variation on
Ted 2 or
Neighbors 2, whereby a sequel is viewed as disappointing for merely doing about as well as folks expected its vastly overperforming predecessor to do. Had
The Force Awakens earned $650 million domestic, a $600-$700m domestic total for
The Last Jedi would seem just fine. But after a $937m finish last time out, even with the expected 30%
Star Wars 1 to
Star Wars 2 drop (see also:
The Empire Strikes Back and
Attack of the Clones,
The Last Jedi is finding itself on the defensive.
At the very least, the $250 million-ish budgeted sci-fi actioner has already earned $745m worldwide and should end tomorrow over/under $800m worldwide. It will thus end the year just over/under $1 billion worldwide. Oh, and sometime tomorrow, it will pass the domestic cume of
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ($389m) to become the third-biggest domestic earner of 2017. That will be, no matter what happens next, that the top-three North American hits of the year will be
Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($400m+),
Wonder Woman ($413m) and
Beauty and the Beast. Yes, all three of the year’s biggest movies will be female-led blockbuster fantasy movies. But, please remind us again how female-driven blockbusters are box office poison.