Lucasfilm’s “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” had a steeper than expected Friday-to-Saturday drop at the box office, taking in $47.5 million from 4,430 screens, resulting in industry estimates to be revised down to an opening weekend of $175.5 million.
Globally, the film has a launch of $373.5 million with $198 million grossed overseas, including $26.8 million in the U.K.
It’s strange to think that an opening weekend that ranks as the third highest of 2019 and the third highest ever in December would be perceived by some as underperforming, but that speaks to the sky-high expectations that this Disney-made “Star Wars” trilogy has created for itself. In 2016, “The Force Awakens” posted a then-record $247 million opening and two years later, “The Last Jedi” took in a $220 million start. Regardless of those $200 million-plus expectations, “The Rise of Skywalker” is still meeting tracker projections, which were set at $175-205 million. Disney was more conservative, putting their tracking at $160 million.
After critics gave Rotten Tomatoes scores of over 90% to the last two installments, they have been very tepid on “Rise of Skywalker” with a 57% score. Whether audiences agree depends on what metric you check. CinemaScore audience polls gave the film a B+, making “Rise” the first “Star Wars” film aside from the ill-fated “Clone Wars” animated film to not receive an A or A-. However, Postrak scores were still strong with a 4/5 and 70% “definite recommend,” while the verified Rotten Tomatoes audience score stands at 86%.
The true impact of this trilogy capper’s word of mouth will be seen in the weeks to come. “Rise of Skywalker” is coming out later than “Force Awakens” or “Last Jedi,” meaning there’s still plenty of casual moviegoers that are waiting to see the film until Christmas Day or next weekend, when more people are on holiday.
While reviews have knocked the film’s plot and its haphazard attempts to inject Emperor Palpatine back into the story, critics have acknowledged that “Rise” has plenty of popcorn spectacle. For many moviegoers, that could still be enough to push the film to a $500-$600 million domestic run.
The other big holiday release of the weekend, Universal’s “Cats,” has failed to clear any bar. Initially projected to open in the mid-teens against a reported $95 million budget, “Cats” is instead bombing at the box office with a $6.5 million opening from 3,380 screens.
The hopes for this Tom Hooper musical were that it would withstand a weak opening against “Star Wars” and that strong word of mouth would allow it to leg out like “The Greatest Showman,” which opened to less than $10 million and went on to gross $174 million in North America.
But while “The Greatest Showman” earned an A on CinemaScore, audiences and critics alike are rejecting “Cats” with a 19% Rotten Tomatoes score and a C+ on CinemaScore. While some on Twitter are calling the film a future “so bad it’s good” cult classic, reviews calling it a “collective hallucination” and comparing it to the face-melting Ark of the Covenant from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” will repel more potential moviegoers than draw in the fascinated musical lovers that might give this film future “Rocky Horror” status.
On a wider scope, “Cats” marks the second straight year that Universal has capped off a successful year on a bitter note, following a 2018 in which the studio released the Peter Jackson-produced flop “Mortal Engines.” The good news for the studio is that a rebound might be near. It is releasing the acclaimed World War I film “1917” in select cities on Christmas Day before releasing it in January to coincide with Oscar nominations.
Also opening wide this weekend after a week running in Los Angeles and New York is Lionsgate’s “Bombshell,” which is also performing below box office expectations with a $5 million opening. The Golden Globe-nominated film about Roger Ailes’ downfall was projected for a $9-10 million opening.
Between sharing the theater with crowd-pleasers and the likely lack of desire among many moviegoers to spend the holidays watching a film about a real life sexual harassment scandal, this result is not unexpected. Nor is it necessarily a bad sign for “Bombshell,” as the film can still leg out into January, especially if lead star Charlize Theron turns her Golden Globe nomination for her performance as Megyn Kelly into a win or adds a Best Actress Oscar nomination to it.
“Bombshell” opened in sixth on the box office charts, placing below fellow Lionsgate release “Knives Out.” The Rian Johnson mystery film now has a total of $89 million after making $6.2 million in its fourth weekend.
The other two big holdovers in the Top 5, Disney’s “Frozen II” and Sony’s “Jumanji: The Next Level,” held on well. “Jumanji” took in $26.1 million in its second weekend, keeping the drop from its $59.2 million opening to a solid 56% and bringing its domestic total to $101 million. “Frozen II,” which passed $1 billion last weekend, is drawing closer to the global and domestic benchmarks its 2013 predecessor set. The sequel took in $12.3 million domestically and $43.9 million worldwide in its fifth weekend, bringing it to $386 million domestic and $1.1 billion worldwide.
15 Best Stories Ever Told in the 'Star Wars' Universe (Photos)
With 40 years of movies, TV shows, comics, video games, novels and reference books, you'd be hard-pressed to ever run out of stories to read about the "Star Wars" universe, past and present. It's a big universe out there, and every story told in it is connected to all the others. Big stories are told as many different smaller ones, and small stories are told as chunks of a bigger picture.
These are the best chunks, big or small, in the history of the "Star Wars" universe.
15. The Rise of Admiral Daala in the "Jedi Academy Trilogy"
After "Return of the Jedi" in the version of the "Star Wars" continuity before Disney bought Lucasfilm, the Empire fractured into a bunch of splinter governments led by self-proclaimed rulers who would make up new titles for themselves like "high admiral" or "warlord" while still maintaining the pretense of Imperial legitimacy. Daala (a woman!) decided to try to bring it back together, and eventually was able to do so -- for a short time at least. Her brilliant machinations were a compelling as hell tale, and one of author Kevin J Anderson's only good contributions to "Star Wars" lore.
14. The Black Fleet Crisis
This is not referring to the "Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy" as a whole, since two of the three main narrative arcs in those books are unrelated to the event in "Star Wars" lore known as the Black Fleet Crisis.
The Crisis is great because it's the sort of cool scifi story that checks a lot of boxes simultaneously. In particular: unknowable alien force you've never heard of, weird galactic political intrigue with lots of backstabs from said alien force, and a grand mystery regarding how those aliens came to power in the first place. It's a really interesting scenario.
13. Darth Vader's Secret Apprentice
The "Star Wars" universe is full of stories about good apprentices going bad and wreaking havoc on the good guys, but we've very rarely gotten the inverse. That made "The Force Unleashed" a really novel experience. You play as Darth Vader's secret apprentice in the years between the original and prequel trilogies. You're a dark side force user and soldier for the Empire who goes rogue in a really epic way.
12. "X-Wing Alliance"
You're Ace, and you work for your family shipping company. You fly a freighter doing pretty boring things, until your dad's sympathies for the Rebel Alliance come back to bite the whole family in the ass.
You know how this goes: the Empire brings the hammer down, you join the Rebellion as a fighter pilot. But maybe the entire family isn't on board with facing down the Empire. This is the only "Star Wars" space combat simulator that gives you a personal story, and it turned out to be a great idea.
11. Admiral Thrawn
Not specifically thinking of Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy here, but the story of Thrawn's life as a whole and his lasting legacy in the Expanded Universe. This guy was such a genius that even a decade after his death the plans he'd laid out were threatening to tear apart the fledgling New Republic. His fingerprints are everywhere.
10. The Battle of Borleaias
Late in the "New Jedi Order," famed Rebel hero Wedge Antilles is charged with holding the planet Borleias from the Yuuzhan Vong, and it's one hell of a thing. Massively outgunned, Wedge pulls a whole lot of seat-of-your-pants gambits out of his ass -- and this pair of books, authored by the late fan favorite Aaron Allston, is full of great and witty dialogue of the sort you just never got from other "Star Wars" authors.
9. Wedge and Friends Go to Adumar
As the war against the Empire winds down, Rebel hero Wedge Antilles and pals Tycho, Hobbie and Janso, are sent as diplomats to a newly discovered planet full of people who pretty don't give a shit about anyone who isn't a fighter pilot. If that sounds like a sitcom scenario, that's because it basically is. And it's great, incessantly funny and very awkward -- a great little side story that's as witty as they get in this universe.
8. Wraith Squadron
The story of the Wraiths, told over three books, is unique among "Star Wars" stories in a lot of ways. It follows famed Rebel pilot Wedge Antilles as he assembles a hybrid starfighter/footsoldier squadron of emotionally unstable washouts -- the idea being that such a group, when given some operational leeway, might approach apparently normal war scenarios in really unpredictable ways, and that's exactly what happens. It's the most human of all the "Star Wars" stories, full of truth.
7. The Tale of the Imperial Agent in "The Old Republic"
Many of the most interesting "Star Wars" stories are those that focus on characters who can't use the Force, and this is one of those. You play as a spy for the Sith Empire (thousands of years before the movies), doing awesome wartime spy stuff. And you get caught up in a galactic conspiracy to destroy both the Republic and Empire -- by a secret society tired of Force-using factions starting all these galaxy-spanning wars. It's a compelling-as-hell hook.
6. The Rise and Fall and Rise of Revan
Thousands of years before the movies, Revan was a Jedi who led the Republic military against invading Mandalorians -- only to turn to the dark side and wage his own war on the Republic, before turning away from the dark and defeating his own armies. That's the very short, very incomplete version. The story of Revan is thoroughly fascinating and ends up lasting hundreds of years across two video games ("Knights of the Old Republic) and a pile of books and comics.
5. The Jabba's Palace Heist in "Return of the Jedi"
It's become clear in the last few years that a lot of folks never really got what Luke, Leia, Lando and Chewie were doing during the first portion of "Return of the Jedi" -- and now we have all these thinkpieces about how it was reckless and haphazard. But no, that shit was an impeccable heist. They had a plan, and they pulled it off flawlessly and in style.
4. The Dark Wars
This story was told in the video game "Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords" -- a former Jedi who was exiled from the Order returns to known space only to find the Jedi gone from civilization and a pair of mysterious Sith lords wreaking havoc all over. It's a rare "Star Wars" noir story, and it's quite a doozy.
3. "Traitor"
In the '90s the "Star Wars" Expanded Universe got really moralistic and stuffy, and "Traitor" was a total refutation of that approach. It's the darkest "Star Wars" story ever written, but it serves a positive agenda in the end: one that asserts that maybe the Force isn't black and white and the Jedi don't need to stand around wondering about the moral implications of every little thing they do. It was a really great change for storytelling in the EU, and it's nice that it appears "The Last Jedi" might take a similar patch.
2. "Star Wars"
The one that started it all is a silly, not-particularly-well-thought-out movie, but it's tight as hell and covers all the ground it needs to. It establishes a completely new universe so casually, making it feel from the very beginning that this is a real, lived-in place. Everything you need to know about what's going on is right there.
1. "The Empire Strikes Back"
The lesson J.J. Abrams and friends should have learned from "The Empire Strikes Back" widely considered the best "Star Wars" movie, is that you don't make a"Star Wars" movie that stands the test of time by aping previous ones -- you have to go somewhere new. "Empire" functions as a total counter to the first movie, and that's why it's a perfect sequel.
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There are more ”Star Wars“ stories than even you can imagine, even if you think you can imagine quite a bit. These are the best ones
With 40 years of movies, TV shows, comics, video games, novels and reference books, you'd be hard-pressed to ever run out of stories to read about the "Star Wars" universe, past and present. It's a big universe out there, and every story told in it is connected to all the others. Big stories are told as many different smaller ones, and small stories are told as chunks of a bigger picture.
These are the best chunks, big or small, in the history of the "Star Wars" universe.
