In my response to Infidel 753's comment to Reactions to 'Rogue One' from critics and stars, I made a prediction.
I fully expect "Rogue One" to have one of the three biggest opening weekends of the year, right up there with "Captain America: Civil War" and "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice."According to Box Office Mojo, that prediction came true as "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" had the third largest opening weekend of the year, right behind the two big superhero movies. Wochit Entertainment's headline on the film's opening is too good to pass up: ‘Rogue One’ Goes Rogue At The Box Office.
Disney’s Lucasfilm prequel “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” easily took first place at the box office during its opening weekend, earning an estimated $155 million domestically — just ahead of expectations. Counting international returns, the hotly anticipated “Star Wars” movie earned $290.5 million globally as it opened in all major territories abroad, except for China and South Korea...Disney dominated the weekend as returning animated hit “Moana” came in second place with $11.7 million.Forbes puts the opening in perspective with details in 'Rogue One' Box Office: 'Star Wars' Nabs $155M Weekend For $290.5M Worldwide Bow.
It’s the 12th-biggest debut weekend of all time, the 17th if you want to play the “adjusted for inflation” game. It’s the third-biggest opening weekend of the year, behind Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ($166m) and Captain America: Civil War ($179m).That's an impressive roster of films that "Rogue One" has outgrossed in its opening weekend.
It sits right alongside the likes of The Hunger Games, Spider-Man 3 and Furious 7. But of course, those (and the various Twilight Saga sequels and the last two Dark Knight films that opened in the $138-$160 million range) went out as straight 2D releases. I don’t mean to sound like a grinch. This is a terrific debut weekend and will probably lead to an obscene domestic final.
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The debut is (obviously) the second biggest opening ever in December, coming in 83% higher than the $84 million debut of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Heck, it almost topped The Desolation of Smaug’s whole debut weekend ($73m) in a single day. If you count it as a prequel to Star Wars, as opposed to a sequel to Revenge of the Sith, it’s the biggest debut ever for a prequel.
I'm not the only one who can point to a solid prediction. Infidel 753 made one in the comments to 'Suicide Squad' leads Grammy nominations in music for visual media followed by 'Stranger Things' when he cast his ballot for the topic of the next day's entry.
The vote's a tough one, but even though I'm not much of a Star Wars fan, it might be interesting to see how well "Rogue One" does since the most toxic elements of the wingnutosphere are calling for a boycott of it. I'm guessing they'll have zero effect.I think the alt-right boycott had as much effect as it did when 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' blasted to new U.S. box office records -- none. Good call, Infidel!
I made another prediction about "Rogue One" in the comment I quoted to begin this entry.
I also expect it to finish in the top five movies of the year. In fact, if it brings in only half the gross of "The Force Awakens," it would still be the second highest grossing movie released this year, right behind "Finding Dory." I think it might just barely come in first with $600M.Forbes made a simliar forecast.
If it plays exactly like The Force Awakens from here on out, and this is just "fun with math" at the moment, we’re looking at $584m domestic and $1.135 billion worldwide, which would make it the biggest domestic grosser and second-biggest worldwide grosser (behind Captain America: Civil War's $1.15b) of the year.Since my predictions are for the domestic (North American) box office and not the global one, it looks like I'm good. As it is, Box Office Mojo lists "Rogue One" as the fifteenth highest grossing movie of the year so far, right behind "X-Men: Apocalypse," which completed its run in July, and it's only the opening weekend. I'll make another prediction and say that "Rogue One" will be in tenth at the end of Christmas weekend, passing "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." While I was right to predict that "Jason Bourne" would not remain in tenth, I was wrong about which movie would knock it out of the top ten. That kind of mistake doesn't bother me; at least I was half-right.
Enough about "Star Wars" for today. Stay tuned for the speculative fiction nominees at the Golden Globes tomorrow.
And so the bagger boycott flops like a soggy tea-bag plopping into the trash. Cool.
ReplyDeleteIt's curious that -- based on your IndieWire link and other sources -- the alt-right seems even more upset about the female action hero than about the racial diversity, describing her as an "empowered white female" as if that were self-evidently a bad thing. You'd think racists would cheer for any empowered white person. I think that a lot of their prejudices are driven by resentment, and that they tend to have a history of rejection by women.
Anyway, it looks like Rogue One will be an even bigger hit since the Wochit video says it hasn't even opened in China or South Korea yet, and those are fairly significant markets. Speaking of which, among the actor names I notice:
Diego Luna
Riz Ahmed
Jiang Wen
Latin America, the Arab world, and the Chinese-speaking world are pretty significant movie markets these days. Has it occurred to the neo-Nazi nutballs that diversity in casting actually enhances the appeal of movies like this to today's global audiences? I sometimes wonder if they quite grasp that anything exists outside the US at all.
As for the claim that nobody finds female action heroes interesting -- Ellen Ripley, anyone? This is not exactly a new idea.
I'm not surprised. The first attempt at a boycott of a movie organized online by people now involved with the alt-right that I recall was over "Mad Max: Fury Road" for its strong female lead and feminist message, not over the inclusion of people of color (I can think of only one in the movie, Zoe Kravitz, who would piss off the bigots because she's half-black and Jewish, but I don't remember them even mentioning her). That was done by the Men's Rights Advocates (MRAs) who were recruited by the alt-right during Gamergate. The latter knew a bunch of sympathetic marks when they saw them.
DeleteWhile I'm sure adding the MRAs to the alt-right made them even more misogynistic, the anti-feminism was already there. The Nazis thought women's role should be "Kinder, Küche, Kirche" (Children, Kitchen, Church) and I'm sure that attitude carried over to the white supremacists and Neo-Nazis of the modern alt-right.
As for the actor names, the Republic/Rebellion has always been committed to diversity, if in a fantastic way, and Disney has carried on the tradition, if for no other reason than it's good business.