When Disney bought the rights to Star Wars a few years back, people balked at the $4 billion price tag that George Lucas demanded for his empire. Balked…to the max. But Disney had the capital, Lucas had had enough of the internet and a license to print money was born. To say that Star Wars: The Force Awakens made some money at the box office is a bit of an understatement, along the same lines as Neville Chamberlain declaring “peace in our time”.
With a global box office of over $2 billion, the Force was back and in charge with the seventh core episode of the Star Wars saga. Nostalgia is a powerful thing hey. And then there’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It doesn’t have the star power of the episodic Star Wars films, but it does have something else going for it: A fresh new approach. The interquel details just how the Rebel Alliance got their hands on the Death Star plans, and it has a totally different tone from the looks of things.
And that’s great! But it’s probably not going to make as much money at the box office as The Force Awakens did. And Disney is well aware of that. At a presentation at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia event via Variety, Disney Chief Bob Iger spoke about the future of the Star Wars franchise and how Rogue One presents a different take on the saga. Still, financial expectations for it to succeed aren’t that high:
It’s really interesting in terms of ‘Star Wars’ storytelling. ‘Star Wars’ has only been told as a saga, and this is a moment in time … we love what we’ve seen. We never felt it would do the level that ‘Force Awakens’ did, [even though] the level of interest is as high as it was for ‘Force Awakens.
Fair enough. If I had to take an educated guesstimate, I’d bank on Rogue One making between $400-$600 million worldwide after a few weeks at the box office. Although honestly, any movie with Donnie Yen as a cosmic Jedi believer kicking stormtrooper ass across the galaxy deserves to earn a lot more than that. WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!
Last Updated: September 22, 2016