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A look at each Star Wars trilogy, the original saga, the Prequel trilogy and Disney's sequel trilogy, emphasizing global box office and rate of return.

By a fluke of the calendar, this week marks the anniversary of both the first six live-action Star Wars episodes and the five-month anniversary, 2.5-year anniversary and 4.5-year anniversary of Disney’s Star Wars sequel saga. While the initial Star Wars films opened over Memorial Day weekend in 1977 (May 25), 1980 (May 21) and 1983 (May 25), George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels opened the weekend before Memorial Day weekend on May 19, 1999, May 16, 2002, and May 19, 2005. Yes, May 25 will mark the two-year anniversary of Solo: A Star Wars Story, but I digress. This isn’t exactly a shocking notion, but the films have generally been less profitable, in terms of rate-of-return (budget versus gross) as they’ve gone on.

The first Star Wars earned $503 million worldwide, including $307 million domestic, in 1977 on an $11 million budget, earning it a ridiculous 45.7x rate of return on Fox’s investment. Of course, in an era where a movie like The Godfather could earn $246 million worldwide on a $6 million budget, it was more the sheer size of the gross versus the pure return that so impressed the world. The Empire Strikes Back earned “just” $209 million domestic in 1980 and $400 million worldwide on a budget that ballooned from $11 million to $33 million. To be fair, if you’re going to have a movie that starts at $11 million and ends at $33 million, the sequel to Star Wars is probably the safest such circumstance.

Nonetheless, the film earned “only” 12.1x its eventual budget. Return of the Jedi was the first Star Wars movie to open wide, earning a record-crushing $41 million over its Wed-Mon Memorial Day frame in 1983 on the way to a $252 million domestic and $122 million overseas for a $375 million global cume on a $33 million budget. That gave the (at the time) finale an 11.3x return. By the time Lucas returned to the series, in the summer of 1999, budgets had ballooned to the point where spending $115 million on a tentpole like Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace was downright responsible. Nonetheless, spending ten times the money was not going to result in ten times the grosses.

It should be noted that the first three Star Wars movies and The Phantom Menace arrived in theaters when a movie like Star Wars was entirely not the norm. Save for maybe the first two Superman films and Raiders of the Lost Ark, the fantasy tentpole movies that might challenge Star Wars for supremacy (Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Batman) didn’t arrive until after the trilogy had run its course. And while The Phantom Menace debuted in early May just after The Matrix and The Mummy, films of the scale, size and scope of Star Wars Episode One were still not par for the course. A film like Terminator 2, Jurassic Park and/or Independence Day was till rare enough to make Phantom Menace an automatic event.

As such, despite mixed-positive reviews and divisive fan reception, the Lucas-directed The Phantom Menace legged out from a $64 million Fri-Sun/$105 million Wed-Sun domestic debut to $431 million by the end of the summer. That’s a 6.7x weekend-to-final multiplier, which is still one of the leggier runs for a relative mega-opener over the last 25 years. Independence Day earned $100 million in its first six days and $50 million over the Fri-Sun portion in July of 1996 on its way to a $307 million domestic cume. Terminator 2 earned $204 million from a $33 million Fri-Sun launch in July of 1991. Anyway, Episode One also earned $924 million worldwide, becoming the second-biggest global earner ever behind James Cameron’s Titanic ($1.8 billion worldwide in 1997/1998).

The Phantom Menace would earn 8x its production budget, but it would be (comparatively) downhill from there. Attack of the Clones was the first Star Wars film to face real competition both in terms of concurrent summer tentpoles and pop culture zeitgeist. Attack of the Clones would open just over/under half-a-year after Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ($317.5 million domestic and $974.5 million worldwide on a $125 million budget) and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring ($313 million/$884 million on a $95 million budget). Moreover, Spider-Man would snag a record $114 million opening weekend two weeks prior to Episode II on its way to $402 million domestic and $821 million worldwide on a $130 million budget.

Attack of the Clones would earn $80 million over the Fri-Sun portion of its $110 million Thurs-Sun debut, a Fri-Sun opening that put it behind only Spider-Man and Harry Potter’s $90 million launch in November of 2001. Nonetheless, despite a showstopping third act, it was comparatively frontloaded, earning “just” $302 million domestic in its initial domestic release (not counting that $8 million-grossing IMAX reissue) and $645 million worldwide on now almost frugal $115 million budget. Attack of the Clones would mark the first time that a Star Wars movie would not place first for the year. It would place third domestic (behind Spider-Man and The Two Towers) and fourth worldwide (behind Spider-Man, Two Towers and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets).

Nonetheless, Lucasfilm would see a 5.6x return on their investment for Attack of the Clones, and frankly Episode III was the one that everyone (including George Lucas) wanted to see in the first place. In a stroke of luck/happenstance, by the time Revenge of the Sith opened in May of 2005, The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix franchises had both run their course, Harry Potter was on a downward slope (it would recover with Goblet of Fire six months later) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was still a year away. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was, comparatively, the only game in town that summer and the undisputed king of the summer blockbuster mountain.

Couple that with the whole “series finale” bump and some genuinely spectacular sequences, and Revenge of the Sith would break records for a midnight preview ($16 million) on its way to becoming the first movie to earn $50 million in a single day. Since it opened during that weird moment in time when tentpoles occasionally dropped on a Thursday to combat online piracy, it didn’t quite surpass Spider-Man’s $114 million Fri-Sun frame, settling for a $108 million Fri-Sun debut and a record $158 million four-day launch. Like The Phantom Menace, it had to settle for second place (behind Lost World’s $74 million Fri-Sun portion over a $92 million Fri-Mom Memorial Day weekend debut) because it chose not to open on a Friday.

The prequel finale would earn $380 million domestic (tops for the year) and $868 million worldwide (behind only Goblet of Fire’s $896 million cume on a $150 million budget), giving it a solid (and better than Harry Potter 4) 7.55 rate-of-return on its $115 million budget. While the (self-financed by Lucasfilm) Star Wars prequels were somewhat cheaper than tentpoles of their respective era, they still were comparatively less profitable than the previous Star Wars movies. That’s not shocking, but, again, spending ten times more on your Star Wars movie didn’t result in ten times larger global box office, even with inflation and multiplex expansions. Had Disney not purchased Lucasfilm in late 2012 for $4 billion, Revenge of the Sith would have been the end.

The Force Awakens would be the first live-action Star Wars movie to ever open on a Friday. That, along with strong reviews and the pent-up demand for a “present tense” sequel to Return of the Jedi that featured Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, Carrie Fisher’s Lea Organa and Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker, helped the movie make history when it opened not in May of 2015 but December of 2015. Smartly slotted in the same pre-Christmas week Fri-Sun frame that saw the openings of Titanic, Avatar and many of the Peter Jackson Middle Earth flicks, J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens opened with $248 million, which was both a new record and nearly three times the old December milestone ($84 million for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey).

Star Wars Episode VII would both score a “summer blockbuster” opening and nab “Christmas legs,” passing Avatar in North America ($937 million versus Avatar’s $760 million in 2009/2010) and earning $2.068 billion worldwide. Credit the obvious demand, a crowdpleasing film, winning new characters (Daisy Ridley’s Rey, John Boyega’s Finn, Adam Driver’s Kylo) and the total lack of year-end competition. It may have placed third worldwide to Cameron’s Titanic ($2.1 billion thanks to a 2012 3-D reissue) and Avatar ($2.788 billion), but it still earned 8.44x its $245 million budget. It was actually more profitable than any Star Wars prequel. It, like the first two Star Wars sequels, had a budget comparable to the biggest tentpoles but had earned top-tier tentpole money.

However, The Force Awakens so absurdly overperformed, especially in North America, that it potentially set the bar too high for future Disney Star Wars flicks. And the number itself was so high, $2 billion worldwide (!), that the inevitable “first sequel drop” looked much larger. The Last Jedi would open amid rave reviews and strong buzz as a sequel that both respected The Force Awakens and wasn’t quite as beholden to Star Wars tropes (which retroactively made Force Awakens better) to a near-record $220 million domestic debut. While critics loved it and general audiences seemed to like it (it earned an A from Cinemascore), a vocal portion of the fandom, some (but not remotely all) motivated by racism, sexism and gate-keeping, really disliked it.

Thanks to online handwringing, an understandable downturn in interest after the first “new” Star Wars movie in 32 years, a fluke in the calendar that saw Christmas break not starting until the end of its second weekend and robust competition from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle ($404 million domestic and $962 million global) and The Greatest Showman ($184 million/$441 million), Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi got the “summer blockbuster” opening but not the Christmas legs. It would earn $620 million domestic and $1.33 billion worldwide. That was the same 1/3 drop exhibited by Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones (and the likes of Batman Returns, The Lost World and Fallen Kingdom), but the sheer size of the fall ($735 million) stood out.

Nonetheless, The Last Jedi was the top movie domestically and worldwide while earning 6.65x its $200 million budget. So, oddly enough, it was more profitable than Attack of the Clones while facing a similar onslaught of tentpole competition. J.J. Abrams’ The Rise of Skywalker suffered from mixed-negative reviews and relative competition from Disney’s own Frozen II (Force Awakens “lucked out” when Good Dinosaur bombed one month prior), opening with $177 million and ending up with $515 million domestic (a solid 2.9x multiplier, slightly leggier than Last Jedi’s 2.8x) and $1.074 billion worldwide. And since The Rise of Skywalker, which suffered from a director swap and a rushed production schedule, ended up costing $275 million, it had to settle for a “mere” 3.9x profit.

That’s an average rate of return of 7.06x for the prequels and 6.215x for the sequel trilogy. The original trilogy earned around $1.2 billion on a combined budget of around $77 million, for an average 16.5x rate-of-return. In all three cases, the first installment ridiculously overperformed, although Empire and Jedi didn’t have the disadvantage of tentpole competition nipping at their heels. As the “Skywalker Saga” continued to expand, the budgets increased exponentially while the global box office, save for each “part 1,” comparatively did not. Never did a Star Wars film earn more than 56% (Revenge of the Sith) of its global gross overseas, so Star Wars remains a domestic-centric franchise. Nonetheless, Disney paid double the money and almost earned double the grosses.

The Disney trilogy ($720 million) cost more than double the Prequel trilogy ($345 million). The Hobbit trilogy cost around $650-700 million while Lord of the Rings cost around $300-$350 million, and they both earned almost identical cumulative global grosses ($2.931 billion in 2012, 2013 and 2014 versus $2.96 billion in 2001, 2002 and 2003). The Disney Star Wars trilogy earned $4.475 billion on a combined budget of around $720 million while the Prequel Star Wars trilogy earned (not counting reissues) $2.437 billion on a combined $345 million budget. That Disney’s sequel trilogy was almost as profitable as the prequel trilogy, despite ballooning budgets and a massive increase in tentpole competition, makes Disney’s first batch of Star Wars movies an unmitigated commercial success.

The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2020-05-25 05:00pm The fact that TFA overperformed and lead to unrealistic expectations is a very important one. Its sometimes claimed that TLJ failed because it made much less money than TFA, and I think this partly explains Disney's craven response (ie retconning as much of TLJ as they could to appease the trolls). But second Star Wars films in a trilogy always made less than the first, and expecting every subsequent film to make as much money as TFA, a mega-hit and first of the long-awaited Sequel Trilogy, was always absurd. TLJ did well measured against realistic expectations. The only genuine flop was Solo, although RoS could be considered disappointing, given that it made less than TLJ (in both previous trilogies, the third film outperformed the second).

Beyond that... the only way to expand your audience is to, you know, expand your audience. In the long-term, then, Disney doubling down on trying to pander to and appease a shrinking demographic of middle-aged OT purists is not a viable long-term strategy. We need a Star Wars that speaks to younger generations as strongly as the OT spoke to young people when it was released.

chimericoncogene wrote: ↑2020-05-25 07:02pm Rather hard to appeal to the Chinese market if you don't put in any subcultures with Chinese cultural heritage in, or when the Star Wars universe doesn't have rice. Lots of nifty fresh food on Tatooine though... mmmm.... If you want to appeal to the Chinese market, make Kuat and Rothana majority East Asian, and have them sell guns to all sides. Make them look badass reasonably rich lawful neutral, and they will slather all over it.

ray245 wrote: ↑2020-05-25 08:00pm

This comes across as rather racist?

ray245 wrote: ↑2020-05-25 05:56pm

The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2020-05-25 05:00pm The fact that TFA overperformed and lead to unrealistic expectations is a very important one. Its sometimes claimed that TLJ failed because it made much less money than TFA, and I think this partly explains Disney's craven response (ie retconning as much of TLJ as they could to appease the trolls). But second Star Wars films in a trilogy always made less than the first, and expecting every subsequent film to make as much money as TFA, a mega-hit and first of the long-awaited Sequel Trilogy, was always absurd. TLJ did well measured against realistic expectations. The only genuine flop was Solo, although RoS could be considered disappointing, given that it made less than TLJ (in both previous trilogies, the third film outperformed the second).

Beyond that... the only way to expand your audience is to, you know, expand your audience. In the long-term, then, Disney doubling down on trying to pander to and appease a shrinking demographic of middle-aged OT purists is not a viable long-term strategy. We need a Star Wars that speaks to younger generations as strongly as the OT spoke to young people when it was released.

The thing is, other franchise had given that false impression. Take the Avengers movies for instance, where almost every instalment is growing in terms of overall box office. The new stand-alone movies are making more money than previous stand-alone movies, the new team-up movies are making more money than the previous team-up movies and etc.

As for expanding your audience, I don't think they've really done that well from the very beginning. TFA is entirely made to appease those who had grown up with Star Wars, more specifically the OT. Audience that didn't grow up with the OT didn't have the same response. This is why it didn't do as well outside the anglo-American market.

They tried to make SW more appealing to diverse demographics ( there was a strong push to ensure SW is not longer a male-dominated demographic), but I do not think they've done well with that at all. They've hired a more diverse cast, but at the same time didn't develop many of those characters as well.

Just because a character is a minority or female does not automatically translate into gaining interest from those demographics. Finn for is rather wasted as a character.

Soontir C'boath wrote: ↑2020-05-25 09:06pm Bruh, you already dug yourself a rather large hole.

The Transformers movies (Michael Bay be damned) did pretty damn well in the Chinese box office as well as many other movies. If anything, we've seen the backlash with Rogue One when they casted Wen Jiang and Donny Yen as people thought they were only there to try to get them to come out to watch the movie and not that they actually held important roles, so you're literally just making the problem worse.

The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2020-05-25 08:47pm Indeed it does.

Soontir C'boath wrote: ↑2020-05-25 09:06pm Bruh, you already dug yourself a rather large hole.

The Transformers movies (Michael Bay be damned) did pretty damn well in the Chinese box office as well as many other movies. If anything, we've seen the backlash with Rogue One when they casted Wen Jiang and Donny Yen as people thought they were only there to try to get them to come out to watch the movie and not that they actually held important roles, so you're literally just making the problem worse.

The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2020-05-25 09:00pm The thing is, other franchise had given that false impression. Take the Avengers movies for instance, where almost every instalment is growing in terms of overall box office. The new stand-alone movies are making more money than previous stand-alone movies, the new team-up movies are making more money than the previous team-up movies and etc.

As for expanding your audience, I don't think they've really done that well from the very beginning. TFA is entirely made to appease those who had grown up with Star Wars, more specifically the OT. Audience that didn't grow up with the OT didn't have the same response. This is why it didn't do as well outside the anglo-American market.

They tried to make SW more appealing to diverse demographics ( there was a strong push to ensure SW is not longer a male-dominated demographic), but I do not think they've done well with that at all. They've hired a more diverse cast, but at the same time didn't develop many of those characters as well.

Just because a character is a minority or female does not automatically translate into gaining interest from those demographics. Finn for is rather wasted as a character.

MKSheppard wrote: ↑2020-05-26 10:46am Basically, Disney is no George Lucas.

Lucas was a really good budgeter for all of his movies. He was smart enough to realize that more money doesn't automatically equal more profits; that there's a diminishing returns line.

chimericoncogene wrote: ↑2020-05-25 07:02pm Rather hard to appeal to the Chinese market if you don't put in any subcultures with Chinese cultural heritage in, or when the Star Wars universe doesn't have rice. Lots of nifty fresh food on Tatooine though... mmmm.... If you want to appeal to the Chinese market, make Kuat and Rothana majority East Asian, and have them sell guns to all sides. Make them look badass reasonably rich lawful neutral, and they will slather all over it.

Vendetta wrote: ↑2020-05-26 11:50am A trilogy made with the primary intent of nostalgia baiting audiences about other movies from 40 years ago was not going to appeal to a market where those other movies didn't get released 40 years ago.....

MKSheppard wrote: ↑2020-05-26 11:58am Regarding budget/making back budget -- this is a main issue with a lot of media now since the cost to make AAA+++ titles for anything (movie, TV, video games) has risen so much that....Game of Thrones cost $6 million/episode in prior seasons; while ST:Discovery costs $8M/episode.

Vendetta wrote: ↑2020-05-26 11:50am
A trilogy made with the primary intent of nostalgia baiting audiences about other movies from 40 years ago was not going to appeal to a market where those other movies didn't get released 40 years ago.....