The reviews are mediocre, the fans are angry and the movie isn’t very good, but Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is still making money. On New Year’s Day, the film crossed the $400 million domestic mark with a haul of $17 million, taking its total to $407.6 million.
So, how does this stack up compared to other Star Wars movies released around the same time? Well, on their respective New Year’s Days, The Last Jedi took $14.2 million, Rogue One took $16.75 million and The Force Awakens a whopping $34.3 million. However, while The Rise of Skywalker might have bested The Last Jedi on New Years’s Day, it’s still running behind its predecessor.
On Sunday, The Rise of Skywalker was trailing 2% behind The Last Jedi’s box office total and is 8% behind over its first 13 days. Part of that may be chalked up to the film’s reviews and bad word-of-mouth getting out, but analysts argue that the big box office days like Christmas Day and New Year’s Day fell later in its run.
While the dust is still yet to settle, all this means that The Rise of Skywalker will be a hit, but it’s looking doubtful that it can best The Last Jedi’s domestic box office of $602.1 million (with a global total of $1.3 billion). By its 16th day of release, The Last Jedi had busted through the half-billion mark domestically and though some early projections had The Rise of Skywalker besting it, that probably isn’t going to happen anymore.
If Rise does fall short of its predecessor, the questions about management at Lucasfilm will only intensify. We’ve heard multiple reports since the film’s release that Disney were aggressively course-correcting away after being spooked by the fan reception to The Last Jedi. Right now, it seems like their efforts to pander to Star Wars fans have backfired, with the movie set to go down in history as one of the worst-reviewed entries in the franchise. I guess we’ll have to wait to find out if it’ll also be the lowest grossing of Disney’s Sequel Trilogy, too.
