As you know if you've been following along, The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones both did around 70% of the business (worldwide and domestic) that Star Wars and The Phantom Menace did in their initial theatrical releases. So the notion that The Last Jedi is a disappointment because it is clearly going to make a lot less than The Force Awakens is... silly. I discussed this a little under two years ago, when The Force Awakens wrapped up its run, that "part 1" of the previous Star Wars trilogies were far and away the biggest of the bunch. So, yes, The Last Jedi may have to settle for an under $700 million domestic total and an under $1.5 billion global cume. I think Lucasfilm will survive.
The Last Jedi earned an additional $24.68 million on its second Friday, a sharp 76.4% drop from its $105m opening day. That's a lot, bigger than most top-tier MCU movies and not close enough for comfort to the 67% drop for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story last year. And while it may be a record Fri-to-Fri drop for a Star Wars movie, the prequels had worse "opening day to day eight" drops in their respective runs. Phantom Menace opened on a Wednesday and fell 72% on its second Wednesday. Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith opened on Thursdays and fell 78% and 81% on their respective second Thursdays.
As noted before the movie even opened, Last Jedi is facing a lot more kid-friendly competition (Jumanji is arguably overperforming) than The Force Awakens did in 2015, with Coco, Wonder and Ferdinand teaming up with The Greatest Showman, Pitch Perfect 3 and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle to put a comparative dent in Star Wars' muscular hide. Oh, and we're going to see a huge comparative second-weekend drop partially because Christmas Eve is on Sunday this year. So, hyperbolic headlines notwithstanding, don't panic too much when The Last Jedi becomes the eighth member of the $100m+ losers club, possibly dropping more between its first and second weekends than even Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II (a $42m weekend two from a $169m debut frame) back in 2011.
Barring a sharp downturn, we're probably going to see a $70-$76 million second weekend, down 68-65% and still possibly good for the sixth-biggest second weekend of all time behind Avengers: Age of Ultron ($77m from a $191m launch), Beauty and the Beast ($90m/$174m launch), The Avengers ($104m/$207m), Jurassic World ($105m/$207m) and The Force Awakens ($149m/$248m). Come what may, the film will still easily cross $400m on its 11th or 12th-day of domestic release and right behind Jurassic World (ten days) and The Force Awakens (eight days). I guess you could be a jerk and note that The Last Jedi crossed $300m on Friday, its eighth day, at the same pace that The Force Awakens crossed $400m two years ago.
It'll end tomorrow with around $365-$370 million domestic, the fourth-biggest ten-day total behind The Avengers ($373m), Jurassic World ($402m) and The Force Awakens ($540m). But Jurassic World didn't have a second batch of weekdays where it did about what it grossed in its first batch of weekdays, give or take the competition. Of note, the second Friday for The Force Awakens was right on Christmas Day while the third Friday was on New Year's Day, which was a huge boon to its initial sprint. The Last Jedi will take a comparative hit this weekend since Christmas and New Years' will be on a Monday this time. But we're going to see a big uptick on Christmas Day/Monday after which the movie has another two weeks of relative weekdays that play like weekends before the new year starts in earnest over Martin Luther King Day weekend.
Obviously, we're probably not looking at an $800 million+ domestic total (and $700m is no longer a guarantee), but the next eight days or so will determine if it does "absurdly good for anything that isn't Star Wars" or ends up fighting it out on the all-time chart against The Avengers, Jurassic World and Titanic. For what it's worth, Eragon (back in 2006 or the last time when Christmas was on a Monday) fell 68% on its second weekend and then rose 17% on weekend three. There's a lot of wiggle room and the tale will be told over the next two weeks. The Last Jedi is going to take a dive this weekend and is going to need that holiday blitz to regain the higher ground above Jurassic World and The Avengers. But, no, it isn't performing any differently than should have been expected for a Star Wars sequel.
Heck, if it merely performs like Rogue One after Monday it's still looking at an over/under $675 million domestic gross, good for the same third-place finish that greeted The Phantom Menace back in the day. Both Hobbit prequels that opened on a Friday did 2x their ten-day totals by the end of their run, as did Eragon and even I Am Legend had 41% left to go after Christmas Day. The Last Jedi was always going to be the most frontloaded Star Wars movie thus far. And it was never going to honestly compete, especially not overseas (where Star Wars is less of a religion), with The Force Awakens. There is little reason to argue (yet) that these numbers are representative of a troubling crash.
If it burns out next week, after all the kids are out of school, then we'll talk panic mode. But with a likely end-of-Christmas global total of around $800 million worldwide, it's a little too early to call in Dwayne Johnson or Joel Schumacher to save this franchise. The Force is still strong with The Last Jedi, and it's still going how we thought it would.
