The ever reliable Dark Horizons has reported an interesting financial fact regarding Star Wars Episode IX : The Rise Of Skywalker. Looking at some data in Deadline they are reporting that the movie yielded a profit for Disney of $300m. This was against a production budget of $275m but total global costs including marketing and distribution of over $670m.
Sounds OK. Who wouldn’t want $300m in the bank? However the important gap is between the expectation, therefore what Disney’s financial planning assumptions would have been based upon, and reality. In this regard it’s a pretty bad performance.
Alongside the worst reviews of the franchise it falls very far down the Star Wars profitability league.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was the first ever standalone movie and that managed to generate net profit of $319.6m. The Last Jedi made $417.5m, and that is with leaving an estimated $700m in ticket sales on the counter from missing out on repeat viewings as die hard fans stayed at home the 2nd and 3rd time around.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens made a staggering $780.1m in profit.
Much derided, but actually better than at least 2/3rds of the sequel trilogy, Solo even managed to turn a profit but that was only $77m.
Spider-Man: Far From Home beat its profit with $339m for Sony even after the complicated commercial arrangements with Marvel.
Oh Kathy. What have you done?
