The Rise of Skywalker' Unlikely to Top Recent Star Wars Installments on Opening Weekend

By Erich Schwartzel

LOS ANGELES -- The box-office Force is strong with "The Rise of Skywalker" -- but not as strong as with previous Star Wars movies.

The final installment of Walt Disney Co.'s most recent trilogy of the space saga, which opens Thursday, is expected to make about $200 million this weekend in the U.S. and Canada, according to preliminary industry estimates. That is slightly less than its immediate predecessor, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," which made its debut to $220 million in 2017, and further behind the 2015 installment, "The Force Awakens," which opened to a then-record $248 million in 2015.

Predicting an opening as stratospheric as a Star Wars debut is tricky because analysts rely on a combination of surveys and preliminary sales data that can be unreliable with blockbuster weekends. But "The Rise of Skywalker" is nonetheless expected to dominate the holiday box office in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, when moviegoing hits its highest levels of the year.

Disney's record with Star Wars films has been mixed. The previous movies in this trilogy have opened north of $200 million. But the most recent installment divided fans, the "Solo" spinoff underperformed and questions have arisen about the pace of releases depressing overall appetite for the franchise.

Given the fan appetite for a new Star Wars movie, Disney is able to claim about 65% of the value of ticket sales from theaters, which many exhibitors called the highest proportion in Hollywood and well above the 55% for most major releases.

As it has with other recent Star Wars movies, Disney is also requiring theaters to screen "Skywalker" for four weeks, the longest such "hold," which exhibitors said is longer than any other franchise is able to command. That is a particular problem for single-screen businesses in small towns where the entire customer base usually turns out in a movie's first week or two. Some of those smaller operators are forgoing "Skywalker," saying they fear they will end up with nearly empty auditoriums in the latter part of the movie's run.

The final installments of the two previous Star Wars trilogies have landed in the middle when it came to domestic box-office receipts. "Return of the Jedi" made $253 million in 1983--$54 million less than the 1977 original but $44 million more than 1980s "The Empire Strikes Back." The third film of the prequel trilogy, "Revenge of the Sith," from 2005, grossed $380 million, about $51 million less than the first prequel and $78 million more than the second.

"The Rise of Skywalker" is closing out a trilogy that has had a metabolism unprecedented in the franchise's history. Since acquiring Lucasfilm Ltd. in 2012 for $4 billion, Disney has spaced out installments in the trilogy by only two years -- versus three-year intervals between movies in the earlier trilogies. Disney increased the tempo further by releasing spinoffs "Rogue One" and "Solo" between the films in its trilogy.

"The Rise of Skywalker" isn't the only big-budget Star Wars property premiering in the past five weeks. Disney's "The Mandalorian," a series on the company's new Disney+ streaming service, has been embraced by fans but may have sucked up some of the enthusiasm for "Rise of Skywalker."

Concerns about putting too much Star Wars into the marketplace have prompted Disney to put the series on a "hiatus" following the "Skywalker" release, Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger announced earlier this year. The next Star Wars movie -- said to concern a story line separate from the Skywalker characters -- is scheduled for release in late 2022.

The storytelling challenge of "Skywalker" is daunting. Director J.J. Abrams must not only wrap up the story line kicked off with new characters in 2015's "The Force Awakens," but also bring a conclusion to the narrative established with Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo in the 1977 original. It must also bring fans back on board who were alienated by "The Last Jedi," which took the story line and characters in unexpected directions.

Reviews following the movie's premiere on Monday night in Los Angeles were mixed. Mr. Abrams, who is known as a director whose tastes often align with those of hard-core fans, inserted several nods to the original trilogy in the new film -- during one particularly nostalgic surprise cameo, one attendee at the premiere yelled, "Yeah, J.J.!"

Write to Erich Schwartzel at erich.schwartzel@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 18, 2019 11:59 ET (16:59 GMT)

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