Yeah, it needs an insane run to match Avatar now. Requires about 46-47% higher daily numbers than Rogue One the rest of the way. $700m is the goal and we will see how that goes. Could easily fall under if the holiday boost is not as strong as some of us are predicting.

Yeah this looks like a given now. It will end up under Avatar. Goes to show how big of a run were SW7 and specially Avatar.

Its early, but so far its looking to come in way under Avatar which is kind of surprising to me considering $750M seemed like the absolute worst case scenario. It would be even crazier if it went sub $700M though. If that were to happen I think the divisive WOM should definitely be considered a major factor.

A lot of it is probably just the general sequel problem we see all the time. I think TDKR and Ultron both had good WOM. But good WOM is not good enough when we are dealing with sequels to record-breaking movies that had off the charts WOM.

Spidey 2 is the only one I can remember where it performed very similar to the previous movie. There is pretty strong consensus that Spidey 2 was at least very similar quality, perhaps even better quality than the first one. Even with that type of awesome WOM for Spidey 2, it came up 7.5% short of Spidey 1's gross with two years of ticket price inflation helping the sequel.

Bottom line is you need insane WOM on a sequel like this to avoid a pretty big letdown, especially in the legs/multiplier. I don't think Last Jedi has insane WOM, it has positive WOM and that is simply not enough.

If the multiplier declines similar to TDKR, it grosses $688m. If the multiplier declines similar to Ultron, the gross will be $665m. These seem like crazy drops from Force Awakens performance, but they really aren't that crazy when you consider what happened with TDKR/Ultron. All "surveys" out there indicate both of those movies had good WOM and yet they dropped 17-20% on the multiplier.

There is no way on Earth it even reaches $700m. It opened big but that Monday drop showed its true colours. It's really just R1 size, not TFA.

Yah its not doing 700m now unfortunately...unless it somehow does gangbusters this weekend

It might do great over holidays but after that it's not going to do much after. RO did almost $100m after New Year weekend while. TFA did almost $200m, so far TLJ is not holding on par with those two movies. During holidays (11 days) RO did $220m. Based on that the max TLJ will do is $250m i.e. $547m. And post holidays another $120m i.e. $670m. I just don't see it following TFA anymore which did $350m over 10 day holiday boost but it's weekdays were close to $30m.

$700m is dead after that Friday estimate.

700m is DEAD Episode VIII: Star Wars Fans Destroy Star Wars

9 of us have lost this fight already but 700m is NOT dead yet.

Wonder if there was NO backlash from fans would it STILL drop as much.
How much is the backlash affecting its boxoffice?

Originally posted this in the Friday Numbers thread, but it probably fits better here.

Looking through the history of sequels to films that broke the all time top 5 since 1990, The Dark Knight Rises and Spider-Man 2 are the only films to hold onto more than 80% of the audience of the original films. So over Avatar always seemed like a bit of a stretch to me. $700 million is he new goal now it seems, and we probably won't have a clear idea of its chances at that until the Wednesday or Thursday numbers are in later this week. I should note that $700 million total would be very close to what Empire and Return of the Jedi did in their initial runs adjusted, which would be pretty fantastic.

As for legs....hindsight and all, but I think what we're seeing is just the loss of the casual viewer that came to see The Force Awakens because hey fresh new Star Wars, everyone's hyping about it. Same thing happened with Phantom Menace, and Attack of the Clones ended up losing 40% of that movie's audience despite having a stronger opening. Last Jedi, worst case scenario, is losing 30% of TFA's audience, even though that movie was far bigger than TPM. Again, I feel like with ever follow-up to an all-time massive grosser we fail to take that casual viewer into account - we all freaked out when Age of Ultron fell 27% from the first Avengers and wondered if the MCU was fading, but it's still doing great.

I do think the Alt-Star Wars fans attempts to paint this as a hated film is making us BO eggheads think this film's weaker legs is solely due to poor reception instead of natural decline as you pointed out Jonathan

FUCK THOSE FUCKERS!!! IT'S ALL THEIR FAULT!!!!

TLJ would likely be doing better at the box office if it was universally loved by all fans.

I do think it's the natural decline for TLJ, a small indication of this is other movies like Jumanji and PP3 both doing big numbers.

So in just three years, Star Wars has ruined the Christmas tentpole release.

How so? It’s still making a killing. lol just not up to par with TFA is all

We'll see after the holidays, but I bet its legs will be the worst out of the three.

I don't think Disney is crying

Sure, not yet. But as always when you milk something (a franchise, a release strategy, a marketing gimmick), returns will diminish. They just can't let anything remain special. Something worked one year so that's it, every damn year now!

Christmas still is bank. Magic Kingdom is still a most go to destination. Star Wars will always be bank. But yes, returns will diminish. Still making one billion every year is more than three billion every five years

People will come around

It won’t make it to 675. More likely ends up around 640.

Yeah I just don't think it will do $675m anymore. I think my $635m calculations based on RO's run seems to be most accurate thus far.