Can 'Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker' Rise to the Heights of Its Predecessors?

December 19, 2019 13:45 PST - By Brad Brevet - Box Office News

The year will soon be coming to a close, but not before Disney and Star Wars have their say as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker debuts this weekend, sights set on a strong debut, though it does have some high quality competition in the family sector with Jumanji: The Next Level entering its second weekend following a strong debut last week. This week also sees Universal's release of their adaptation of the stage play Cats while Lionsgate expands the release of Bombshell nationwide.

Entering the weekend, Disney is anticipating a $160+ million opening for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which would make this the only film in the new trilogy to not debut over $200 million in its first three days. Previously The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi opened with $248 and $220 million respectively, ranking among the top five domestic openings of all-time. Franchise spin-off, Rogue One also debuted in December and delivered a $155 million opening. The biggest question here is where the overall audience sentiment stands following the fevered anticipation for The Force Awakens four years ago to the muted response to Solo, just last year. Rise of Skywalker is unlikely to suffer from any kind of franchise fatigue as it serves as the end of the now 42-year-old Skywalker saga and the last chapter in this newest trilogy, which has relaunched Star Wars into the current zeitgeist.

A look at IMDb page views has shown Rise of Skywalker trailing the last three December Star Wars releases over the two weeks leading up to release. That said, given the timing, even if the film were to debut as low as the studio's $160 million expectations, the fact Christmas falls two days later puts the likelihood of a massive five-day debut very high. Right now we're going out with a forecast right at $215 million and wouldn't be surprised to see a performance just below or much higher than that as it has seen serious growth in IMDb page views over the last few days. Don't expect the mixed-to-negative reviews &mdash; 58% on RottenTomatoes and 53 on Metacritic &mdash; to have any kind of real impact on the film's first two-plus weeks, though it could prove a sign of the film's overall domestic returns should audiences agree.

Internationally, Rise of Skywalker debuts day-and-date in all territories except Vietnam, Korea and the Philippines where it will begin playing in early January. The film began playing yesterday in several markets including France, Germany and Italy as well as early previews in China, which will continue to play through Thursday on to the film's opening day on Friday (leading one to question just when exactly a film is considered to be "in release"). To that point, Rise of Skywalker will have its first official domestic previews on Thursday, though nine-film fan events, screening all nine Star Wars films back-to-back-to-back began on Wednesday with official previews of the film beginning around 6PM on Thursday.

Sony's Jumanji: The Next Level will slip to second in its sophomore frame after a nearly, $60 million launch last weekend, though just how much it's going to "slip" is a big question. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle debuted on a Wednesday two years ago, and over its first official weekend it brought in just over $36 million. However, over its second weekend, it saw a +38% increase as it began its run to a $400+ million domestic performance. It would be unfair to expect a similar performance from the sequel, though a ~25% drop similar to its predecessor's third and fourth weekends wouldn't be surprising. For now we're anticipating a drop around -29% and a $42 million three-day performance, pushing the film's domestic cume to $120 million if not more should it outperform our forecast.

It looks as if it could be a tight race for third, mostly depending on how Universal's Cats performs as Disney's Frozen II continues its impressive run this weekend. We're anticipating a dip around -22% and a three-day nearing $15 million as the film's domestic cume should be topping $400 million within the next week. Question is, can Cats outperform that figure?

Rounding out the top five we could find Sony's Ico with a dip around -23% and a three-day around $13.8 million as the film's domestic cume should be around $290 million by the end of the weekend.

Outside the top five we find Lionsgate with their expansion of Bombshell, which debuted in four locations last weekend and will expand into over 1,450 theaters this weekend with the studio anticipating a performance in the high single digit millions. We've been looking at comps to films such as Molly's Game and The Big Short for guidance and it's lining up with studio expectations as we expect to see a $7+ million three-day. A difficulty with the majority of comps around this time, especially when looking at the expansion of limited releases is where exactly Christmas falls. For Molly's Game, it debuted in limited release on Christmas Day, which fell on a Monday while The Big Short hit limited release on December 11 going wide on Wednesday, December 23. That factored in, along with positive audience response to last weekend's limited release, 95% audience score on RottenTomatoes means results on this one could vary as we head toward Christmas Day on Tuesday.

This weekend's forecast is directly below. This post will be updated on Friday morning with Thursday night preview results followed by Friday estimates on Saturday morning, and a complete weekend recap on Sunday morning.

* Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (4,406 theaters) - $215.0 M
* Jumanji: The Next Level (4,227 theaters) - $42.0 M
* Frozen II (3,665 theaters) - $14.9 M
* Cats (3,380 theaters) - $14.0 M
* Ico (3,682 theaters) - $12.0 M
* Paradoria 2 (2,992 theaters) - $7.1 M
* Bombshell (1,480 theaters) - $7.0 M
* Knives Out (2,535 theaters) - $6.2 M
* Richard Jewell (2,502 theaters) - $2.6 M
* Ford v Ferrari (1,433 theaters) - $2.5 M