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| Movie Poster Courtesy impawards.com |
On the low end, including LucasFilms/Buena Vista/Disney executives are suggesting $125/$135 M Domestic and $300 M Worldwide. The opposite end of the scale, the high end, many predictors have the movie earning in the range of $165/$170 M and $300 M Worldwide.
To put that in perspective $130 M domestic opening would rank as the 22nd largest in history and $170 M would be the 13th largest. $130 M foreign opening would rank as the 36 largest while $170 M would rank as the 20th largest.
It is interesting that the predictors who are suggesting a better domestic opening are also suggesting a poorer foreign opening and vice versa.
Large, excited fan base? Check!
no competition at the box office? Check!
Star Power? Check!
Massive marketing campaign that has been carefully constructed not to revel too many details. Check!
Previous Movie set records at the box office? Check!
Solid Score on Rottentomatoes.com Metcritic, and every other site? Check!
So why is this movie not going to open better?
Like many prequels Rouge One: A Star Wars Story is stuck in an unenviable position of being stuck in the prequel trap. The hard core fans know the story well enough to repeat it back to you verbatim, well the regular fans only know the movie is about Star Wars and if they are lucky the plan to steal the Death Star Plans prior to Star Wars; A New Hope. Now you have to write a script to satisfy both groups. Very rarely is that done.
Pre-Hypeulation, it just made that term up, but it is an adept description of the problem. Two weeks ago the hype meter was pegged for this movie. It was the talk of virtually every Internet sci-fi/fantasy show, the actors were making the rounds on TV, both foreign and domestic. The hype for other sci-fi/fantasy movies was at a lull. In the past week we have had trailers for War for the Planet of the Apes, Spider-man: Homecoming, and a few others. Suddenly instead of being number 1 by a mile, they are number 3 or 4 as the movie opens.
Over all the reviews are good, upper 70's on rottentomatoes.com, 67 on Meta Critic, other aggregate sites are posting similar numbers, but those aren't game changing numbers. Scores below 50 could scare casual fans away, scores above 85 can draw fans in. You are in that middle ground where the reviews affect the potential viewership minimally if at all.
The more you know about Star Wars the more you are going to like this film. We have all heard it from the first viewings, from critics, from fans, from me, and that is going to scare the not so hard core fans.
So where does this film end up after the first weekend?
I think internationally this film is going to do better than expected. It has the features that international audience crave, when it comes to multicultural cast, solid directing, a good story, and the added bonus of an American funded high budget. International reviews have been more positive pushing the upper 80's (out of 100) on aggregate sites. $175 M to $215 M are the ranges if the models hold true and best guess is just under $185.
Domestically this film is not going to have some of the high end numbers some people are expecting. Even with its build audience its looking more towards the lower end of the scale. Models in the $125 M to $145 M seem in line with $137 seeming to be a best guess.
Domestic - $137
Foreign - $185
Worldwide - $322
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