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'Star Wars' Franchise Crosses $4 Billion, Eclipsing Disney's Lucasfilm Price (hollywoodreporter.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the empire-building dept.

Combined, Disney and Lucasfilm's Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars: The Force Awakens have surpassed $4.06 billion in ticket sales at the worldwide box office. That's more than what Disney paid to buy George Lucas' Star Wars franchise. From the Hollywood Reporter: While an interesting benchmark, it doesn't, of course, account for the hundreds of millions spent to produce and market the trio of films, or the fact that Disney splits box-office grosses with theater owners. Conversely, Disney has minted additional money from lucrative ancillary revenue streams, merchandising sales and theme park attractions. Opening in North America on Dec. 15, The Last Jedi zoomed past the $900 million mark on Thursday, finishing the day with $934.2 million globally, including $464.6 million domestically and $469.6 internationally (it doesn't land in China until Jan. 5). The sequel to The Force Awakens was directed by Rian Johnson, and has dominated the Christmas corridor. The Last Jedi will jump the $1 billion mark over New Year's weekend on its way to becoming the top-grossing 2017 release, eclipsing the $1.264 billion earned by fellow Disney title Beauty and the Beast. In December 2015, filmmaker J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens shattered numerous records on its way to grossing $2.068 billion globally, including an all-time best $936.7 million in North America, not accounting for inflation.

9 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. A movie with a message by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "We can film whatever we want, slap Star Wars on it and rake in the cash."

    1. Re:A movie with a message by AK+Marc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      JJ ruins things for me.

      Take, for example, the "mining ship" in Star Trek. No cargo hold for anything they mine, and a very impractical shape for anything that's doing mining. You can picture JJ in the boardroom, shouting "scarier, more menacing" and writing it in like a character. He ruined that when he wrote a hatch in dirt into Lost as a character. But the mining ship was stupid, for a mining ship. Every decision he makes is stupid, and designed to "entertain", not "tell a story". He should work for Cirque du Soleil. The other really stupid thing in Star Trek is the chase. Kirk is being chased by an instadeath. A larger creature (impractical for an ice planet), kills the creature and doesn't eat it. Picture a hunter out to kill a deer. It kills a deer. It notices the deer is chasing a mouse. The hunter ignores the deer he just killed, and chases after the mouse. That's the decision JJ made. It's stupid, and it ruins everything he touches.

      Some like that, and endless lens flare, but, personally, I find his obvious and deliberate decisions to be stupid and distracting.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    2. Re:A movie with a message by bongey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Kathleen Kennedy's goal is to make 'The Force Is Female" , https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/def...
      Make weak males , Mary Sue females throughout the movies. Come on Luke Skywalker gets his ass beat by a girl who just a week later didn't even know what the force existed. Oh and she can lift more than Yoda with the force. So she is basically the most powerful Jedi after about a week.

  2. Get over yourselves by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm 50 years old. In 1977 I saw Star Wars in the theatre 13 times ("Star Wars" NOT "A New Hope").

    I bought the comics. I had the toys. I read "Splinter of the Mind's Eye." I loved everything Star Wars.

    Nevertheless.

    People need to get over themselves. These movies are not the second coming of Christ. They are *never* going to be able to live up to fanboy expectations, so let those expectations go. See the movies, have a good time, enjoy the light sabers and the Falcon but stop getting so worked up about a 2.5 hours of popcorn fun.

  3. Not worked up, just frustrated. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There was a whole universe of non-Lucas Star Wars that was what made it enjoyable to me. They shit all over the intricately woven story spanning dozens of authors that had been wrought over the 15ish years that Lucas had sat idle before crafting another film, and between him and now Disney, have managed to shit all over those stories such that a fictional schism is the only way to resolve it, much like with the TOS vs TNG trekkies, those who were into the FASA/Starfleet Battles Klingons and assorted races, versus those who followed TNG and company when they changed them into an almost unrecognizable race.

    For hardcore fans both of these events were slaps in the face. As I have said previously, the only real way to work around it is to boycott both universes and collaborate on new sci-fi universes owned and controlled by the fans, with restrictions/gentlemen's agreements on who does what with which characters, and on what are acceptable worldchanging events to weave into storylines. The potential is there, but for whatever reason, people seem to prefer to sheeple around the biggest assholes creative works, rather than banding together and forging their own, even if they will band together and forge derivative works of other's proprietary works to the same degree of effort.

    1. Re:Not worked up, just frustrated. by bongey · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Kathleen Kennedy's goal is to make 'The Force Is Female" , https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/def... make all future men in Star Wars weak and have Mary Sue females throughout the movies. Come on Luke Skywalker gets his ass beat by a girl who just a week later didn't even know what the force existed. Oh and she can lift more than Yoda with the force. So she is basically the most powerful Jedi after about a week.

  4. I never thought I'd say it but I miss Jar Jar by sandbagger · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The Last Jedi apparently died in Return of the Jedi.

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    ---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
  5. Re:They're coasting on fumes by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I thnk of tihs movie as the "Batman vs. Superman" step.

    I won't be paying for the next movie unless my friends see it first and are raving about it.

    This was a terrible movie.

    Bad pacing, editing, meaningless storylines, change to a craptastic universe (where every choice you make is wrong), bad writing.

    The acting was decent.
    The look and feel was good.

    It reminds me of the DCU and the Kelven Star Trek lines.

    It destroys a ton of existing extended universe canon and even effectively destroys a fair amount of "movie only" canon.

    Basically, if it wasn't Star Wars- it would have been a bomb.

    It's down to 51% on RT and even the critical rating is dropping now that critics who had to pay to see the film and didn't have early access are weighing in which means they are almost all negative.

    I went the day after christmas. The theater parking lot was packed. We had 15 people in the star wars showing at 8pm. Everyone was seeing other films.

    I won't be seeing the next films unless my friends are raving about what a good movie it is. Notably, no one had anything good to say about it.

    "Look y'all, I'm Mary Poppins!" -- Admiral Organa- the last jedi.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  6. Re:They're coasting on fumes by AHuxley · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But some General and Vice Admiral got to lecture the audience and cast.
    The really bad casino people and freedom for the "horses".
    Can an entire franchise be supported by more and more virtue signalling?

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    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"