Not being part of the main franchise was always going to be a major obstacle for this and the tracking shows it, but if it gets bad reviews than that would definitely hurt it's legs, especially since it won't be getting the repeat viewings of TFA.

It'll beat BvS 2016 opening day record of 81m....on its way to a 170-180m wknd

I would be more surprised with a $150m opening than Rogue One failing to match Force's opening in total. Just doesn't seem like anyone is really buzzing for it. Even the biggest Star Wars fans, myself included, are looking down the road. Atleast the Han movie has Lord and Miller on it.

Tickets go on sale this Monday.

12:01 am tonight

Personally i don't feel much buzz (in the context of the franchise) for this and neither am I all that excited for it. If it can make $400m total - that would be a solid milestone. If it can beat Dory - then that's a bonus.

well... Fandango is down for me lol

Also tried buying tickets on AMC and it crashed.

It hit 35% this morning. A far cry from the over 90% TFA had for like a long time.

GOT MY TICKET!!! 7:45pm Thursday the 15th

54% now. It might take this one a week or two to destroy FANTASTIC BEASTS.

What is your point?

You will cry seeing all your beloved films of 2016 getting destroyed by R1

That you have such a hard-on against STAR WARS because you're a HARRY POTTER fanboy and I enjoy poking at it, mostly because I was also a silly fanboy when I was your age.

It was never a question which would do better. I love Star Wars and I bear it no ill will.

Which is why you slam it every chance you get.

It's okay, zwack. I was the same way with THE MATRIX. I know what it's like to feel threatened because a movie is threatening your favorite thing.

That's silly. I know Star Wars has a bigger fan base and it probably always will unless Disney starts making Star Wars films everyone hates and WB manages to make more good films from JK Rowling.

I feel much more threatened by Doctor Strange maybe out grossing it than Star Wars. That was always a sad given.

I was doing a long-range forecast for the coming weekends, and I forgot how much the daily pattern we have this year tends to depress the weekend numbers. Even with fanboy frontloading I have a hard time seeing this get anything worse than a 3.5 multiplier. I currently have it a $118M opening weekend, and about a $430M total. That total feels a bit high (I've had it pegged at $390 million for a while now), but the opening feels a bit low. I guess I'll figure it out.

Mm-hmm. 67%.

So initial pre-sales for this are really strong out the gate which shouldn't be surprising considering this is Star Wars were talking about, but now I'm curious how long it will actually stay at that momentum. Obviously, the diehards are going to be the first one's swiping them up left and right, but if I remember correctly TFA was going strong for weeks. It will be interesting to see where it's at come next week, although it's not like there's a lot of competition out there.

The presales for Rogue One started six weeks later than Force Awakens - I wonder what the strategy in that was?

I can see Finding Dory and R1 with similar totals. I was on the sub-$400m bandwagon but I'm getting off.

From THR:

Well, the fans are at least as excited about it as they were Force Awakens.

But that's still pretty nuts. I had no idea how this would do with Thursday previews, but I guess it should be good for at least $20 million with these kind of presales, right?

I'm thinking previews will push at least $25m. Excluding midnights only TFA and Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2 have pushed past $30m for previews, I definitely think it's possible.

The level of interest from people even vaguely "into" Star Wars will be on par with The Force Awakens. So, initial sales and openings will not surprise me if they are similar, but no way in hell it is making $930m like Episode VII did. Not even close, because it had re-shoots and doesn't feature the main Star Wars characters (besides Darth, who won't feature as prominently as Han in TFA, for example). It's probably going to annoy Star Wars fans. That's what I see happening. So, big opening, $300m tops total.