#Mbox office bump after net movie
The Force Awakens would be the first live-action Star Wars movie to ever open on a Friday. Had Disney not purchased Lucasfilm in late 2012 for $4 billion, Revenge of the Sith would have been the end. That’s not shocking, but, again, spending ten times more on your Star Wars movie didn’t result in ten times larger global box office, even with inflation and multiplex expansions. While the (self-financed by Lucasfilm) Star Wars prequels were somewhat cheaper than tentpoles of their respective era, they still were comparatively less profitable than the previous Star Wars movies. The prequel finale would earn $380 million domestic (tops for the year) and $868 million worldwide (behind only Goblet of Fire’s $896 million cume on a $150 million budget), giving it a solid (and better than Harry Potter 4) 7.55 rate-of-return on its $115 million budget. Like The Phantom Menace, it had to settle for second place (behind Lost World’s $74 million Fri-Sun portion over a $92 million Fri-Mom Memorial Day weekend debut) because it chose not to open on a Friday. Since it opened during that weird moment in time when tentpoles occasionally dropped on a Thursday to combat online piracy, it didn’t quite surpass Spider-Man’s $114 million Fri-Sun frame, settling for a $108 million Fri-Sun debut and a record $158 million four-day launch. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was, comparatively, the only game in town that summer and the undisputed king of the summer blockbuster mountain.Ĭouple that with the whole “series finale” bump and some genuinely spectacular sequences, and Revenge of the Sith would break records for a midnight preview ($16 million) on its way to becoming the first movie to earn $50 million in a single day. In a stroke of luck/happenstance, by the time Revenge of the Sith opened in May of 2005, The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix franchises had both run their course, Harry Potter was on a downward slope (it would recover with Goblet of Fire six months later) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was still a year away. Nonetheless, Lucasfilm would see a 5.6x return on their investment for Attack of the Clones, and frankly Episode III was the one that everyone (including George Lucas) wanted to see in the first place. It would place third domestic (behind Spider-Man and The Two Towers) and fourth worldwide (behind Spider-Man, Two Towers and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets). Attack of the Clones would mark the first time that a Star Wars movie would not place first for the year. Nonetheless, despite a showstopping third act, it was comparatively frontloaded, earning “just” $302 million domestic in its initial domestic release (not counting that $8 million-grossing IMAX reissue) and $645 million worldwide on now almost frugal $115 million budget.
Anyway, Episode One also earned $924 million worldwide, becoming the second-biggest global earner ever behind James Cameron’s Titanic ($1.8 billion worldwide in 1997/1998).Īttack of the Clones would earn $80 million over the Fri-Sun portion of its $110 million Thurs-Sun debut, a Fri-Sun opening that put it behind only Spider-Man and Harry Potter’s $90 million launch in November of 2001. Terminator 2 earned $204 million from a $33 million Fri-Sun launch in July of 1991. Independence Day earned $100 million in its first six days and $50 million over the Fri-Sun portion in July of 1996 on its way to a $307 million domestic cume. That’s a 6.7x weekend-to-final multiplier, which is still one of the leggier runs for a relative mega-opener over the last 25 years.
A film like Terminator 2, Jurassic Park and/or Independence Day was till rare enough to make Phantom Menace an automatic event.Īs such, despite mixed-positive reviews and divisive fan reception, the Lucas-directed The Phantom Menace legged out from a $64 million Fri-Sun/$105 million Wed-Sun domestic debut to $431 million by the end of the summer. And while The Phantom Menace debuted in early May just after The Matrix and The Mummy, films of the scale, size and scope of Star Wars Episode One were still not par for the course. Save for maybe the first two Superman films and Raiders of the Lost Ark, the fantasy tentpole movies that might challenge Star Wars for supremacy ( Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Batman) didn’t arrive until after the trilogy had run its course. It should be noted that the first three Star Wars movies and The Phantom Menace arrived in theaters when a movie like Star Wars was entirely not the norm.
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