We have entered a new year and while much will change in the next twelve months, one thing will remain the same: Disney is the biggest studio on the planet and Star Wars is the biggest franchise on the planet.
That was very apparent this weekend as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker stayed atop the box office chart for a third time. The film took in $33,739,000 and brought its grand total to $450,796,441. Globally, the J.J. Abrams movie has drummed up $918 million and is this close to reaching $1 billion, which is no big whoop to Disney. In fact, Skywalker will soon become Disney’s seventh 2019 film to produce $1+ billion. That’s ridiculous. That’s unbelievable. That’s Disney.
Let’s take a look at The Rise of Skywalker. Much was made of the film’s lower-than-usual Rotten Tomatoes score and the slightly softer opening but the movie is doing quite well and isn’t dropping like a stone, which some predicted. Yes, it’s the worst of the new Star Wars films. Yes, critics didn’t like it and even polled audiences didn’t love it as much as the two that came before. But Skywalker is still doing incredibly well. In fact, it’s keeping pace with The Last Jedi, which also took three weeks to hit $1 billion. The film is holding steady and doing what it needs to, despite the bad reviews. So it’s obvious that (once again) all this talk of Star Wars fatigue may have been a little premature. That being said, perhaps they should put more effort into the script next time.
There was more good news for Disney this weekend as Frozen 2 officially became the highest grossing animated film of all time. Its global total now sits at $1.3 billion, which surpassed the original Frozen ($1.28 billion) and The Incredibles 2 ($1.24 billion). Many assumed Frozen 2 would take the top animated spot after its colossal opening weekend and, sure enough, the movie has just destroyed the competition and soldiered on week after week. I was one of the few who thought that Frozen 2 wouldn’t outdo its predecessor for some reason. I was wrong. I was wrong and I am sorry. I will never doubt you again, Frozen 2.
There weren’t any new entries on the chart this weekend except for the remake of The Grudge, which scared up $11,300,000. That’s better than anticipated, though not a lot better. Don’t expect the movie to do great business moving forward though. The CinemaScore rating for The Grudge is a cool “F”, meaning audiences absolutely abhor the movie. I’m actually a bit impressed, it’s really hard to garner an “F” rating. So the word-of-mouth for this thing will be bad, bad, bad.
But not as bad as Cats, which is about to depart from our chart after only three weeks. The film hasn’t even cracked $30 million yet and is sitting at number ten, barely hanging onto its ninth life. Oh well, you can’t say anyone is surprised about that film’s total and complete implosion. But don’t worry, I’m sure Universal will give Tom Hooper another chance to make yet another musical in the near future.
Other notable entries on this week’s chart include the tenacious Knives Out at number 7 with a total gross of over $130 million, Jumanji: The Next Level staying put at number two, Uncut Gems drumming up $7,826,928 at number eight and Little Women continuing to impress at number three. The chart didn’t alter too much but that was expected. We are in the quiet post-Christmas timeframe when everything settles down for a few weeks and everyone just submits to Star Wars. Even next week brings little competition. 1917 and Just Mercy go wide and we’ll see the releases of Underwater and Like A Boss but, come on, you and I both know The Rise of Skywalker will rule the day yet again.
“Gimme your damn money.”