Editorial: Could Rogue One Push Disney Past $3 Billion at the Annual Domestic Box Office?
Last weekend, Disney crossed the $2 billion mark at the box office for the United States & Canada, beating Universal’s 2015 record by nearly an entire month. If Rogue One: A Star Wars Story does well enough, it’s entirely possible that Disney may become the first studio in history to have domestic ticket sales reach $3 billion in a single year. Here’s an analysis on what it would take to make that happen.
Disney’s 2016 So Far
From the onset, Disney has had a pretty great year. The continued success of Star Wars Episode VII, along with big hit of Captain America: Civil War and the overperformances of Zootopia and The Jungle Book, ensured that they reached $1B domestically at a faster rate than any other film company in history. Disney’s global total for the year is well over $5B at this point, which is a great number on its own. Match that up with the smash hit of Finding Dory (which will either near or creep past $500M by the time it’s done playing in American/Canadian theaters, with the film having yet to open in several major international markets) and you’ve got a fiscal year that brought in $2B with five months left on the clock.
Unfortunately, not everything that the Mouse House has put out this year has been a smashing success. Disney was able to cruise through the soft performance of the mid-budget disaster movie The Finest Hours, but two big-budget flops – Alice Through The Looking Glass and The BFG – have had larger implications on what Disney’s year-end total will amount to. Had either of the big-budget films done substantially better, Disney would be locked in for a $3B finish to 2016. While the company’s not exactly bleeding cash at this point, making up for a major box office bomb is no cakewalk for a corporation, either. But, as I said earlier, they’ve got a good five months ahead of them, and with that, six more movies.
What’s Still Ahead & Limitations
Aside from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Disney will release Pete’s Dragon, The Light Between Oceans, Queen Of Katwe, Doctor Strange, and Moana before the year wraps up. Currently, Box Office Pro has Pete’s Dragon and The Light Between Oceans tracking for respective totals of $117M and $30M. Disney’s domestic total currently comes in at about $2024M, so that’s approximately $976M that these remaining movies have to make if clearing $3B is the ultimate end goal.
The biggest issue with a potential $3B year is that everything released between then and now has to be a perfect storm of box office hits. If any of the non-Star Wars movies flop and there are no surprise overperformances in the midst to compensate, then crossing the barrier is going to be a whole lot harder. Given that interest in the non-tentpole movies seem to be rather low, a $120M cume might be a tall order for Pete’s Dragon, particularly since it’s coming off the trails of WB’s highly-anticipated Suicide Squad. It may serve as good counter-programming for younger audiences, but even then, it also has to contend with whatever misguided parents will take their kids to Sony’s Sausage Party, mistaking the adult comedy for a family movie solely because it’s animated. Oceans and Katwe will predominantly seek the attention of voters at award ceremonies, so it’s not likely that they’ll be heavy-hitters at the box office. Doctor Strange and Moana should both do well, but how well will be up for debate, especially with Strange having to compete with another magic-heavy movie: Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them.
Aside from all of that, since we’re only dealing with the 2016 box office and not the total cumulative box office that Rogue One will bring in during its entire lifetime, we’re looking at a movie that will only have 16 days to make the kind of money that would allow Disney to pass the $3B mark. The box office on this movie will almost certainly be much smaller than the box office for The Force Awakens for two reasons – the first being that there’s not the same kind of insane hype surrounding the movie due to the recent release of that movie, and the second being that Star Wars spin-offs are uncharted territory. That’s not to say that it won’t do well, of course – just that we’re looking at a movie that will probably pass the $1B mark worldwide instead of the $2B mark.
A Rough Estimate & Conclusion
I’ll go with middle-of-the-road estimates for the other five films before getting into a guess at how Rogue One ought to do in a little under three weekends. I’m going to presume that PBO is right about Pete’s Dragon and The Light Between Oceans, and that Queen Of Katwe will perform similarly to the latter, so that would be about $180M in the bag. Doctor Strange will probably do a bit better than Ant-Man but might have a little trouble that any new IP would face, so I’m going with a conservative guess of $220M. Moana ought to be helped by a Thanksgiving holiday, and if so, should make about $200M based on the track record of Disney’s most recent animated movies (aside from Frozen and Zootopia, anyway). I’ll also throw in an extra $35M or so from all the Disney movies that are still in the middle of their box office runs. With all that put together, my guess is that Disney will make an additional $635M, bringing to the hypothetical total to a $2659M total before Star Wars graces the big screen once more. So with that in mind, presuming this all works out, Rogue One would need to make approximately $341M in about half a month for the company to crack $3B domestically.
The Force Awakens cleared that mark at the domestic box office in less than six days; but again, this is Rogue One, and due to a variety of factors, it’s not going to bring in that same kind of money. So as a guesstimate, I’ll just say that Rogue One‘s opening weekend will pull in about a 30% less of what The Force Awakens did in the same time frame (which would by no means be a bad opening) for an opening weekend of about $170M – something comparable to this summer’s Civil War. Since the legs on the movie would naturally be a bit weaker, the Monday-through-Thursday total should bring up a total of about $80M more for the rest of the first week (which would be stronger than Civil War and a bit closer to Dory), meaning that the total should be about $250M. If the next week’s total were to drop at the standard rate (about 50%, give or take a few points), then the second week should end at a domestic total of about $375M, clearing the $3B barrier in approximately twelve days if everything goes as predicted. If complications were to arise with the other five movies, then the movie would still have a good four days to make up for those financial shortcomings – and half of those days would be on a weekend, to boot.
Due to there being fewer notable releases in 2017 (and one of the big Marvel Studios films – Spider-Man: Homecoming – being a co-production with Sony), it’s not likely that Disney will get a shot at reaching $3B next year in spite of an impressive lineup of films (including Beauty & The Beast, Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 2, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Cars 3, and Thor: Ragnarok). Given that Star Wars Episode VIII will be playing in 2018 for most of its theatrical run, and the Han Solo movie will be releasing in Summer of the same year, and the lineup of films (including Black Panther, Wreck-It Ralph 2, Avengers: Infinity War, Toy Story 4, and Ant-Man & The Wasp) is still stellar, 2018 has a great chance of reaching that mark presuming that it isn’t crossed by the end of this year.
This, of course, is all dependent on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story being embraced by fans, audiences, and critics in the same way that Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens was. Tracking for the movie and nearly every other movie I’ve mentioned in this article should more or less be a crapshoot at this point, as there’s still plenty of time for everything to change. But there’s certainly no harm in taking a shot at this – and in any case, ending the year with $3B in the bag would be a great way to cap off the year for Disney. Even if they were to fall slightly short of that goal, they’d at least rest easy knowing that they had one of their most successful years in the company’s history, with an even brighter future ahead of them as more franchises are brought to the forefront.
Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.
Such flowery tone in this article. Sounds like a certain website is pretty cozy with Di$ney for said site to be talking positively about them 😉
eye roll
As are you doing the exact opposite.
No, it will not gross 3 billion. There is less interest in this movie than the force awakens and episode viii. Pull your head out of the bantha poo do
The article is about the studio’s domestic gross, not the film.
Hi, please learn to read.
Of course Rogue One isn’t going to make $3B; the last one, which demolished numerous records, only ended up making $2B when all was said and done. That’s not what my argument was.
My argument was that Rogue One could help Disney finish with a $3B year when adding the grosses of the other movies they released this year (along with the holdovers from 2015, including The Force Awakens) into account.
It’s going to be close, but I think that if their other movies are hits (and that last trailer for Doctor Strange makes me think that they’ll pull in more than $200M domestically with that movie), it might be able to break that financial boundary.
– Pomojema
They said that in the article if you happened to read it. GEEZ. Pull your head out of your posterior and read the article, not just the headline.
I’m just a bantha. I have no understanding of high finance.
Yet you have at least as much common sense as the average studio board!
I think Disney will sure get close, but a good stretch from 3 billion
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story being embraced by fans, audiences, and critics in the same way that Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens was.”
.
Yeah, here’s where I think it falls short for Disney. It’s not an episode, it doesn’t have a legacy cast, apart from the cameo, it doesn’t appear to have any known characters, and casual movie-goers are going to need to have the film explained to them and where it fits, plus, oh, hell, let’s throw in that at some point, someone is going to call it a prequel to the original film. A SW prequel. To take off with audiences anything like TFA did, it has to get over all of those humps, even before seeing if WoM and the reviews are any good. I don’t think it will, and even if it does, I think it may have a slower burn than TFA, and not sell out show after show after show for weeks. End result, I think they’re going to pull up well short of $3b.
You forget the title…. Star Wars.
That, plus the later ad campaigns teasing vader will surely bring the crowds. as much as VII? no. more than Civil War? most likely.
It will for sure be an interesting experiment to see if slapping SW on something will make it a hit, regardless of if it’s part of the larger story or not. Didn’t work for CW, the only other analog we’ve got for R1, but that obviously is a different situation. There was a lot of pent up demand for TFA, and let’s be honest, for fans to rave and WoM to be strong, it had a reeeeealy low bar to clear. R1 doesn’t have any of that going for it – demand pressure was relieved last year and early this year, and expectations are reset to something above the prequels.
But it just looks good and fun. Clone Wars is very different. Not an appropriate comparison. The overwhelming majority of people loved TFA. That is enough incentive. A new, fun, Star Wars movie. It is Star Wars. it will bank $1-billion. Will it do $2-billion?… probably not. $1.5-billion? more than likely. But yeah, we shall see.
On a similar note….. I think Rebels would have a much wider audience if it was not on Disney XD…..
“Yeah, here’s where I think it falls short for Disney. It’s not an episode, it doesn’t have a legacy cast, apart from the cameo, it doesn’t appear to have any known characters…”
Which is why I was saying that my expectations for the movie are set lower than they were for TFA. And I’m sure that Disney is expecting the same thing. I still think that nearing $400M domestically is something that the movie can do before 2017 arrives.
– Pomojema
Oh, I’m agreeing with you, just saying I think that part may be even more important than the other factors. Saving grace may be that it really has no competition in December apart from Assassin’s Creed (which I’m guessing is going to tank).
Let’s not forget about Vader. Word gets out he’s kick ass in the movie, it may get a boost from that.
He’s the cameo I referred to though. And again, that’s WoM – may take a week to spread, which eats up half the time they have to knock it out of the park.
Excellent article and great analysis. You’re right, if Disney can’t get there in 2016, they have a solid chance to break that $3 billion barrier in 2018.
If Rogue One can sail past a billion dollars than that is a damn good start for the franchise. And yes I agree it doesn’t share the same degree of hype as The Force Awakens did last year but it’s got at least one thing in common…Star Wars. Easily one of the biggest film franchises around and a big part of pop-culture. I think that alone should be enough to pass the one billion dollar mark.
I don’t think it will get anywhere near that. Globally it might make it 3/4 of the way there.
Clone Wars movie says ‘Hi’ 🙂 Yes, I know it’s not the same, but it’s the only analog we’ve currently got for these non-episode movies.
Having been unusually silent for a week, Donnie Yen just posted a Facebook video showing that he’s back in the Maldives, presumably for Rogue One re-shoots. At this point, it would be surprising if the film comes out in December.
Why? Plenty of films have late reshoots. Star Trek Beyond had reshoots just a few months ago.
Apparently, TFA had some reshoots around this time into the movie’s production. That worked out fine.
– Pomojema
They even added new cast members earlier this year. Avengers shot a scene two weeks before the premiere.
…because it’s now all about money over substance in Hollywood.
It’s always been about money in Hollywood. That’s showbiz, baby!
Also, I’m not trying to argue about the movie’s merit as its own artistic intent or story. This article is labeled as financial analysis for a reason.
– Pomojema
Bob Iger is supposed to step down in 2018 too. So we’ll see who ends up taking his spot since Tom Staggs stepped down. I feel that Iger has set up Disney to be pretty easy for the next CEO to manage.
If Rogue One, Episode 8 and the Han Solo movie under perform and are critically panned (unlikely) then Iger will be leaving at the perfect oportune moment. Lol
But who could be the successor?
my money’s on Steve Jobs
He’s already dead.
Hmmm…. how about a retired, major shareholder with experience running a huge entity made up of diverse film making corporations? Would at least explode some heads 🙂
no shit
Unknown at this point.
You guys are pathetic, you’re more worried about DIsney’s stockmarket than the integrity of Star Wars
Didn’t you listened to my warning before, asshole?
As you can clearly see, there is nothing to worry about Disney.
The intergrity of Star Wars? Is there still anything to worry about? We are talking about a movie franchise which have been altered and damaged beyond repair by the creator itself… You know, cuz Han Solo killing someone is hurtful for kids according to a wise person.
Does changing a few scenes really spoil Star Wars that much? Don’t get me wrong, I prefer Solo shooting first, but it isn’t spoiling the film that much. Watched it this morning and enjoyed it just as much.
Lol on that Davis person (FYI I’m commenting off your comment because I have that person blocked; and I only know of their comment due to reading it off another computer that I’m not logged on with). “Damaged beyond repair” yeah, that’s why TFA did so poorly at the box office *rolls eye*. Typical delusional manchild fanboy mantra that’s just full of misinformation.
Its the integrity which has been damaged, not the financial power, Leslie. Thanks to a certain 1977 movie anything with a Star Wars sticker slapped onto will sell no matter what it is. The power of that movie is so strong that despite every attempt to destroy it by its own creator turned out to be ineffective.
Btw how many accounts will you create until finally getting the ip ban?
Well the integrity has been certainly damaged by altering a multiple oscar winning masterpiece with completly inappropriate scenes and modifications.
I mean can anything be more hurtful to a movie’s ingerity than altering and adding scenes which ruin the original editing, tone and even the soundtrack? Im not saying it ruined Star Wars, but certainly damaged the interity of it. Well at least imo.
Fair point. If a scene adds to the film its all good, and I would agree GL went a bit over the top. I’m afraid no one ever stood up to him and said ‘good idea, but lets work with it and see’, before making improvements to what GL was suggesting.
Thanks to Disney we have more Star Wars….
Please ban Platinum, man! He’s been disrespectful for too long!
I feel your pain, but no banning. Let him spout his nonsense. The 1st Amendment applies.
Actually….it doesn’t.
Yes, it does. It protects speech you don’t like. No ‘safe zones’ here. LOL….
No, it doesn’t. The First Amendment is a protection from the GOVERNMENT infringing on your speech, not websites or Disqus, which have the right to police speech they find undesirable.
LOL.
And depending on where the website even resides in the world….
Well, I know that. But ‘hate speech’ has no fixed legal meaning under U.S. law. Perhaps I should have said that many websites claim they are champions of free speech, but they turn out to be hypocrites when they start banning folks over trivial statements. Liking or not liking a movie does not qualify as hateful and ‘inciting violence’
I agree. It’s merely a disagreement. Some however, are trolls who are only trying to be jerks.
You don’t have the right not to see opinions that differ from yours. There is no such offense as ‘being disrespectful to Star Wars’. There is no offense such as ‘being rude to Star Wars’. I agree that PS is a constant buzz of complaining, but where exactly do you see banning anyone you disagree with leaving this or any site dependent on discussion? Debating him is pointless, so block him if you can’t just ignore him.
Aw. He +1ed you.
The more $$$ the films make, the MORE Star Wars we get. Why would you want it to do poorly?
If they do poorly, eventually they’s fire Kathleen Kennedy and hire someone competent that would hire the best of the best to write stories and direct them rather than hire her buddies.
Please establish proof of Gareth Edwards and Rian Johnson’s ‘friendship’ before you continue to dig a hole full of your psychoses.
Actually I don’t think Gareth Edwards and Rian Johnson got hired like JJ Abrams. You can’t build a team only with your friends, especially when you’re in a hurry because you want one Star Wars per year. Nevertheless it’s clear JJ Abrams and Trevorow have been selected only because they are friends to Spielberg. Letting JJ Abrams direct a SW movie, let alone the first episode, the one that puts everything in place, defies common sense. JJ Abrams proved before that he’s a terrible director and a franchise wrecker. The Star Treck reviews were terrible, that should have excluded him from Star Wars. But for unknown reasons Kathleen Kennedy decided he was the best choice! Why not Michael Bay while we’re at it?
lol, Star Trek is getting very good reviews.
I’m talking user reviews, no those paid shills that praised TFA for being fresh.
Oh you mean the 85% User Fresh Ratings on RT????
LMAOROTF – nice try but the internet does exist.
Don’t you realize they’re all either paid for or posted by members of the feminist conspiracy? The 15% are the truth-loving MRA red-pillers who can’t be bought.
***quietly checks for my direct deposit from Disney*****
****still waiting lol***
Ever heard of publicity stunts where people are paid to camp outside an Applestore to buy the new iPhone? There’s the paid people in the line and then there’s the clueless sheep who wait in the same line to pay forsomething they don’t even need.
I’ve heard of alien abductions, and the Yeti.
I’m not talking about fake user reviewe, but real people from imdb and youtube. The Avengers has a 91% user rating score. It’s still pure garbage. Nobody takes RT seriously except fanboys who need to be convinced that a shit movie has good reviews.
Oh man, I forgot Wikileaks hacked RT and IMDB to find out which users were real or not.
I better clean my IP history before they find me out! Please don’t publish my 30000 fake user accounts! Please! I beg you not to, because apparently you have all that information! Nooo!
TFA User reviews are mostly good too, unless their from an I hate Disney or I hate TFA site. But guys, we are being trolled, Platinumly.
So you’re a hipster who dislikes anything that is popular?
So, you’re a fanboy who’d run after whatever Disney will throw around, like a lapdog?
You answered a question with a question. You’ve quickly become the most boring troll on the site.
Lol…integrity? U seem to hate TFA and other SW-related material. Also, u seem to think everyone must agree with you to have ‘integrity’. All u have is your opinion ,not facts. It’s all subjective. Others have opinions very different from your own. Their ‘integrity’ is as valid as yours.
Anyone noticed that the Rogue One posters shows the rebels running without protection at stormtroopers shooting directly at them? I know they aren’t the sharpest shooters but usually the rebels would still take cover. When logic is thrown out of the the window, anything is possible. I can’t wait to see how Jyn takes down an AT-AT with her bare hands.
STOP IT!
OMG, you’re right! And on the SW poster, Luke is huge, and standing in the middle of deep space! Does no one realize he shouldn’t be able to breath?! Totally stupid, and ruined the movie for me. I mean, on top of that, he was clearly a giant next to the other characters – how did he even fit in an X-Wing? The poster is unrealistic! I call shenanigans, and for the burning of all prints!
Now that’s a stupid comparison. The old posters are obivous collages of different pictures pasted together wether Rogue One is a scene, it could be a shot taken directly taken from the movie. And btw the movie itself has a shot that is even worse than this, it shows Jyn and her boys running on foot towards an AT-AT that is blasting directly at them, WOW, these machine are useless.
Pretty sure they are desperately running away from the massive bomb and or explosion that happens right behind them. Pretty sure a lot more rebels than R1 are on the ground there. Also pretty sure many of them die.
Desperate times and all that.
they look like they just want to die from blaster shots
The point is that you are now bitching about the logic behind a fucking teaser poster. You are now seriously reaching in your endless, pointless trolling, PS. When you were whining endlessly about TFA, I would defend your right to express your opinion. Now you’re just being plain stupid.
not really, the trailer shows the exact same scene, and they are running towards AT-ATs on top of troopers.
The trailer doesn’t show the same scene. The trailer shows a quick shot or two of our heroes on a beach. There’s a shot of them preparing, then there’s a quick shot of them under fire. Neither shot is a scene, and neither has context. You’re assuming. When you assume, you make an ass out of U…which is, incidentally also quickly becoming what you do ANY time you post.
If you think about it (tough task for some), running towards a walkers legs would provide more protection than running away because the walker would still be able to shoot at you while you run away….lol. If you get to its legs then you’re protected, and can pull off some sort of action to immobilize it.
If you’ve ever watched Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi or played any sort of video game, you might figure this out.
Yeah right, running in an open field towards an AT-AT makes more sense than hiding behind crates… The walkers are clearly way too far to allow anyone to reach for their legs without being shredded immediately. You can see Jyn dodging the walkers canon shots!
There’s no crates in the shot. This isn’t the Assault game in American Gladiators. Its the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, there was no cover unless they got under the guns. So your suggestion is invalid and fiction.
And walker’s don’t fire canons, the story group does. The walkers fire cannons.
Maybe someone should fire cannons at the storygroup then, because they really suck. You’d have to be suicidal to drop before AT-ATs without cover. But I guess it’s okay if it allows for a cool action sequence. Watch Empire Strikes Back attack of Hoth, everything that happens is very logical, no need to go full JJ Abrams to have cool action sequences
“This isn’t the Assault game in American Gladiators.”
I thought the same thing. Haha! Kids…
It’s a crappy poster. I though that the minute I saw it on the Celebration stream. The perspective is weird. The rebels are running toward nothing, the stormtroopers are defending nothing. It looks like a fairly rushed Photoshop job.
None of that has anything to do with whether the movie is going to be any good. You’ve decided you won’t like it because you resent the female lead and you hate Kathleen Kennedy. Nobody took those opinion seriously so now we’re down to “the movie is going to be bad because the poster is not very good”?
Poster should have been a wide-wide-widescreen shot. That would have been nice!
You really are the very last person who should call anything that anyone says stupid.
Platinum Star’s post roughly translates from Bocce into basic as follows:
“I am angry, and lonely. Please pay attention to me.”
When it comes to SW profits, merch is where it’s at man. Film profits cannot compare.
This is the secret.
Don’t count on it. Disney is going to have to pull a miracle out of its azz for Rogue One to be a smashing hit. It’ll make less than half of what TFA made stateside.
That would still be a smashing hit, lol.
You mean it will make $400 million dollars stateside alone? Around the amount of money Civil War and Frozen did?
That’s ridiculous. Rogue One might not do quite as well as Episode VII, but it’s still a Star Wars movie. People are going to go see it. Lots of them. Lots and lots of them. Some several times. So, get ready for a miracle.
So you think it can make 400-450m? Sounds good to me lol. I think it hits 500m though.
Umm…nobody pointed out….Y-WINGS!!! 🙂
The workhorse of the rebel alliance!
Oh, forget it, Pablo Hidalgo tweeted an updated cover for the visual dictionary (we need a nickname for those, can’t use “VDs”…..).
Its of the black clad stormtroopers. No Y-Wings. 🙁
Rogue one looks too serious by half for mass cross over appeal………..