Star Wars: Rogue One Joins The Billion-Dollar Movie Club!
As its run at the box office starts to wind down to make way for several new releases, Rogue One has just become the third Star Wars movie to make over $1 billion at the box office.
According to Box Office Mojo, Rogue One has made an estimated $1,011,301,563 worldwide as of the end of this weekend, which is 39 days since it was officially released in a few overseas territories. The film is now the third in the franchise’s history to reach the milestone, following The Phantom Menace (which reached that point after being re-released in 3-D) and The Force Awakens (which reached that benchmark in 12 days, setting the record as the fastest movie to reach that goal). It’s also the twenty-eighth film to pass $1B when not accounting for inflation, and the fourth and final film of 2016 to reach this goal. Fun fact – all four movies that made over $1B this year were produced by Disney, and one other film they made – The Jungle Book – came pretty close to bringing that number up to five.
The only question left to consider is whether or not the movie will have any significant benchmarks left to pass, such as if it can reach $1.1B or more. The answer to that is probably no, given that the movie’s opened in all of their major markets and the film’s performance in China isn’t exactly anything to write home about – which is not to say that it’s doing poorly so much as it’s not doing as well as it could be. In general, Chinese audiences don’t seem to be as interested in Star Wars as they are with Marvel. As it stands, though, it should still be able to clear the total grosses of Zootopia and Finding Dory to claim the #2 spot of 2016’s highest-grossing movies, right behind Captain America: Civil War.
I can see a few other takeaways from this. The first is that while the “Saga” Star Wars movies will presumably bring in $1B at least, the same might not be said for forthcoming movies in the Anthology series. The second is that if Marvel’s movies continue to do well (and there’s no reason to presume that they won’t), then they could manage to outgross the Anthology films. The third is that this is by neither of these things should be seen as being bad by any means as long as the budgets don’t baloon beyond the point where they are currently – even if the gross for Rogue One‘s ticket sales were to stop at $1B, that would mean that the movie would have covered its production budget five times over with ticket sales before you factor out what percentage theaters get for showing the film.
We’ll do one last box office update on Rogue One when the movie’s final total is accounted for, but that won’t be for several weeks. Until then, be sure to stick around.
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.
This right here probably sealed the 1 Star Wars movie a year forever thing
During December it has. Considering January-April is the dumping ground for shitty films, They can really cleanup then.
More like January-February since blockbuster season is nearly a year-long affair these days. Which is still plenty of time.
– Pomojema
That’s becoming less and less true.
Yep. With Deadpool (and soon Black Panther) in Febriary, Zootopia and Beauty and the Beast in March, and The Fast and Furious movies in April, January, September, and October are quickly becoming the only “non-blockbuster” months.
Good. With this level of quality and less outright ripping off the OT, I’d be happy to see one new SW film each year.
Sort of bittersweet that this means the end of May being Star Wars month what with Marvel/DC now owning that time though I think Han Solo is still due out then which is really odd considering it will be competing with their own Infinity War.
The rumor (which has yet to be fully confirmed) is that it will be delayed to a December release date.
What really interests me is how they’re going to handle 2019, which is going to have to handle the release of both Star Wars Episode IX and Indiana Jones 5.
– Pomojema
Indy will be in the summer like it always was.
And I do believe that the July 19 release date (or whatever it is) is a lock. But even then, Star Wars was a lock for Summer until it suddenly wasn’t.
– Pomojema
I think they will keep that one in the summer and away from Star Wars
Well deserved, too.
I’d love to see them release an Episode 8 trailer with Rogue One now, to give it another kick towards maybe 1.25B.
They could do that… but they’re not gonna. They’re insistent upon advertising only one Star Wars movie at a time.
– Pomojema
Seems they just started advertising a 2nd Star Wars movie 🙂
Dropping a movie’s official title isn’t quite the same thing as dropping a trailer and attaching it to a movie that’s already out. As it stands, most movies make the majority of their money in the first three weeks or so, so attaching a trailer after that most likely wouldn’t do much to boost attendance as more competition comes in.
– Pomojema
As much as I was disappointed with this one, happy it did so well at the box office.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/66ab1c5cac6e0d485b9bbb71399b46f34b610c5f6338fcdbf4363d212d23183a.jpg
Good. Now Disney is able to hire someone who could write an original storyline…
With an unoriginal comment like that, you certainly won’t be on the list.
No only fools like you will be..
Aww, you have to resort to namecalling so quickly? I was hoping you would hold it together a little longer.
Now, if you’re going to be a troll, could you at the very least make an effort to be either clever or funny? Otherwise, you’re just making noise.
Cool, I just blocked H.j.
3 billion made for just two films. what an insane return on investment so far for disney.
Even better is that it’s only two years, whereas the other big franchise that made about that much money (The Avengers) took three to reach the goal.
– Pomojema
Add in merchandise and it’s probably MUCH more, though we should remember that movies generally make about half as much in PROFIT as they do in gross. The profit from TFA was insanely huge, but it was still just under $1 billion. Meaning that that total profit from TFA and R1 is probably more like $1.5 billion so far.
This movie gets better each time I watch it (four times) — it´s basically a tragedy, a sad movie. The end is just a hope of victory, but overall its a giant victory of the empire