The ninth and (supposedly) final installment in the original Star Wars trilogy of trilogies, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker debuted over the weekend to $177.4 million. By any objective standard, that's a staggering amount of money to make in just three days, but as I stated with the disappointing final gross of The Last Jedi and the disappointing, well, everything, of Solo, the words "Star Wars" means that something that is objectively staggering is just not enough. The Rise of Skywalker finished over $40 million below the opening of Last Jedi, and roughly $70 million behind The Force Awakens. It's also only the third best opening of 2019, behind The Lion King and Avengers: Endgame, which is almost certainly going to finish as the highest-grossing film of the year.
What caused the downturn? There are several possibilities, including the poor reviews, Star Wars exhaustion (this is the fifth straight year with a new Star Wars movie) franchise exhaustion in general, or maybe the fact that nearly all the buzz Star Wars has gotten the last two months centers on a creature that isn't even in Skywalker.
So, how much will Skywalker make? If it follows the path of The Force Awakens, it could finish around $670 million. But that seems highly unlikely. If it follows the path of Solo, it could finish with only about $450 million. That seems very low, as it will almost certainly finish well above $500 million. But, it could be the first film from the new trilogy to completely miss $600 million.
Falling to second is Jumanji: The Next Level, which did OK given the competition. Jumanji took in $26.5 million for a ten-day total of $102.3 million. While the original's $404.5 million seems out of reach, with a strong showing Christmas week, it could get to $300 million.
Frozen II continues to freeze out the family competition, taking in $13 million to bring its total to a cool $387.2 million. With kids out of school for the next two weeks, its weekday numbers should help juice its overall gross.
Coming in with an opening far more disastrous than even the worse-case scenarios could have imagined, Cats managed to bring in only $6.6 million. The Christmas box office bonanza will help mitigate the damage some, but at this point, a $40 million final would be a victory. This is getting far worse word-of-mouth than The Greatest Showman got two years ago, so don't expect a repeat of that film's extraordinary box office run.
Knives Out moved closer to $100 million by taking in another $6.5 million, moving its total to $90 million. Expect it to hit the century mark before the end of next weekend.
Bombshell had a decent expansion, grossing $5.1 million to bring its total to $5.5 million. How the drama about the toxic environment at Fox News plays going forward will likely depend on awards attention in the coming weeks.
Richard Jewell likely won't be getting much, if any, award attention going forward, as it came in 7th with $2.6 million, to bring its 10-day total to $9.6 million. Queen & Slim and Ford v Ferrari both took in $1.9 million, for totals of $36.6 million and $102 million, respectively. Rounding out the top 10, soon-to-expire horror flick Black Christmas could only manage $1.8 million, for a ten-day total of $7.3 million.
Because of Christmas, all of this weekend's openings occur today. The biggest is the animated Spies in Disguise, starring Will Smith as a superspy who gets turned into a pigeon, and Tom Holland as the inventor who came up with the machine that put the spy into that disguise. It seems like a good bet to finish second over the five-day Christmas weekend behind Skywalker. Also opening is Greta Gerwig's new adaption of Little Women. 25 years ago, the last major theatrical adaption of the novel, starring Winona Ryder and Susan Sarandon, also opened on Christmas Day, which fell on a Sunday that year, and by New Year's night, had taken in $18.3 million. There's a good chance that this Little Women will be able to beat that in its first five days. Finally, going wide is the drama Uncut Gems, starring Adam Sandler as a desperate jewel dealer who keeps making bad decisions. He has a decent shot at an Oscar nomination, but the film probably needs to do solid business in wide release. We'll see how everything does on the final weekend of the decade next week, on the first day of the new decade. Until then, Merry Christmas!
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