‘Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker’ Box Office Rises To $40 Million In Previews
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalkeris finally here, and as is to be expected, it’s making lots of money. The third and final entry in this new trilogy, and the final installment of the Skywalker Saga, has earned itself a respectable haul domestically. However, it has not surpassedThe Force AwakensorThe Last Jedi– a fact that many will scramble to interpret in a variety of ways.
How willThe Rise of Skywalkerstack-up against the rest of the DisneyStar Warsfilms? Pretty well, it seems. In Thursday night previews, the latest space adventure took in $40 million at the North American box office. That’s a bit below the preview hauls of the other two installments in the trilogy –The Force Awakens($57 million) andThe Last Jedi($45 million).Rogue One: A Star Wars Storyearned $29 million in box office previews.Solohad a Thursday night haul of $14.1 million.
The Rise of Skywalkeris currently tracking for $170 million to $200 million opening weekend.Varietysays it’s likely to land somewhere in the $195 million range. And is will likely do just fine since its only real competition is, uh…Cats, which is tracking to earn about $8.5 million.
The drop off between eachinstallment in theStar Warsfranchise isn’t that surprising.Force Awakenswas a huge deal – the firstStar Warsmovie in over a decade, and the first to feature original trilogy cast members in a long, long time. Since then the number has decreased because, quite frankly, nothing can top that early excitement.
Word of mouth will determine how things play out forRise of Skywalker. Critics have been mixed on the installment, but if the general moviegoing public likes what they see, it will go a long way towards determining how wellSkywalkerdoes in the weeks to come. As of now, this is the last confirmedStar Warsmovie for a while, although Disney and Lucasfilm are both cooking up plenty of stuff behind-the-scenes. Plus there will still be small-screenStar Warsstuff as well, thanks to Disney+. In other words, whileThe Rise of Skywalkermay be the end of a saga, it’s by no means the end ofStar Wars.
