Posted on 11/22/2017 8:38:57 AM PST by Simon Green
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” is heading for a massive launch in the $200 million range during its Dec. 15-17 opening weekend in North America, according to first estimates released by tracking services on Wednesday.
Directed by Rian Johnson, the movie picks up where 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” left off. It stars returning cast members Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, and Andy Serkis.
New cast members include Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, and Benicio del Toro. It’s the final film role for Fisher, who died last December.
“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” set an all-time record in December of 2015, with a domestic opening of $248 million at 4,134 theaters for the first “Star Wars” movie in a decade. The first “Star Wars” spinoff, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” opened a year later with $155.1 million.
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” will most likely be the biggest debut of the year, surpassing the March 17-19 opening for “Beauty and the Beast” at $174.8 million.
Disney had no comment on the tracking, which showed that the key “unaided awareness” and “definite interest” categories in the same range as “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
Should the $200 million forecast hold, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” could be the fourth film to debut at that level. The others are “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” 2015’s “Jurassic World” at $208.8 million for Universal and 2012’s “The Avengers” at $207.4 million for Disney-Marvel.
The $155 million opening of “Rogue One” — which starred Felicity Jones, es Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Ben Mendelsohn and Donnie Yen — was the 15th largest of all time.
As they say, nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American people
holy crow. License to print money.
Odd that the poster shows Mark Hammill vs. the bad Jedi. Does this come down to an uncle-nephew battle? Or a cousin-cousin battle? Do the men do the serious fighting and the girl gets to be the last surviving Jedi?
Is Jarjar Binks in this one?
He’s my favorite actor.
Pass. By the way...isn’t that Adam Driver one of the homliest men in Hellywood?
You mean the girl who looks like a fashion model? The one who was able to achieve what took all other jedis years of training simply by picking up a light saber?
I know the plot already. The 98 pound woman Jedi, easily takes on and defeats the bad guys even though they out weigh her by 100+ pounds and have years / decades more of training.
She will also bail out the male protagonist every time one of their crazy and obvious flawed schemes goes awry.
LMAO!!!
Talented and tasty!
He’ll get the Best Actor Award and Best Burger, too!
I just hope we won't see another Death Star explosion....
Way over-used...
Went from moon size Death Star to a whole planet Starkiller next is some device to cause a star to supernova and create a directed gamma ray burst.
Wow, it actually has a plot? I thought 2-1/2 hours of CGI explosions are all a movie needs any more.
I think the next one has to destroy a whole galaxy.... except for the Outer Rim Territories...
She and the Bad Guy are going to get together
and destroy the entire Light/Dark Dichotomy
and bring The Force into a gigantic version of the iChing
Mark Hammil Is The Last Jedi
I could not possibly be LESS interested in another Star Wars movie... unless it has Jar-Jar and his entire extended family in it most of the time. I mean, really, who can get enough of that?
The previous two Star Wars movies, The Force Awakens and Rogue One, were surprisingly good. Especially Rogue One. It was quite a mature film for a Star Wars story.
Ain’t paying for it...I’ll wait till the media copy gets posted to Google Docs 3 hours after the first showing... XD
All the troubles in the galaxy is because the darned Skywalker family keeps picking left or right. Dark or light.
So maybe this movie will be some blablabla about how we should all be more centrist.
It’s gonna be political, that’s a given. They can’t write anything now without injecting politics into it. That’s my best guess.
Instead of Luke the White...he’s coming this episode as Luke the Grey. Wrong property? :P
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