1.5 billion.

Guaranteed.

Want to bet on it?
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:-)

You're out of your mind.
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Your as bad as oaklandhater, just on a different side. You two should go play in your own thread.
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I agree with much of this analysis. However, I think the majority of the blame has to fall on the shoulders of JJ Abrams - who's continued love for the mystery box has again disregarded the character development, story arcs and plotting for his love of twists and surprise.

If he didn't have a track record for doing this exact thing in Lost, Star Trek and many of his other works, I wouldn't be as critical - but at this point, it seems what JJ has to offer is taking an original work and adding his touch of mystery and propulsive action to it - basically making it an unoriginal cutout of an original work that's driven by a contrived mystery that disregards other elements of the established universe he's working in.

Seriously, his handling of both Khan and Luke Skywalker came at the expense of both character's identity for his love of the mystery box.

I suppose my anger comes from the fact that Disney was so hellbent on getting a movie out there that they allowed JJ to come in with a story that cast adside the future of the saga and the previously established universe.

And now - people are hoping that JJ will somehow come up with something that will "save the story" - but we all know that's going to be Return of the Last Jedi. Fans will be complacently pleased, but will still be left asking what the point was to continuing the franchise (like they did after TFA).

People can be mad at Rian all they want to - but JJ has a track record of starting these exact mystery-driven stories and completely disregarding what the outcome is going to be. People are surprised that these mysteries had divisive payoffs, but at this point with JJ, should they be? I for one loved that Rian was willing to subvert expectations (Killing off 8 foot Palpatine, refusing to re-tell the Yoda/Obi-Wan - Luke story, and refusing to Deus-Ex the ending) while creating a character driven story that had compelling arcs for Kylo, Rey, Poe and Luke (though I know Luke's is being hotly debated).

Anywho - I was pleasantly surprised with TLJ and I'd love for JJ to prove me wrong with 9, but I'm guessing he's going to play it safe again - and that's incredibly disappointing.
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TLJ hits 1.5 billion worldwide at the box office, you ship the blu-ray to my house.

TLJ comes up short I'll ship a blu-ray of your choice to your house.

LET'S ROLL MCCLOUD!


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That was pretty funny.
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I think that "playing it safe" would have been to choose the path of the EU: Thrawn regroups the Imperial Navy, clones a Jedi while Luke, Leia and Han struggle to keep the New Republic together.

I also believe that it would have been much more fun.

They would have needed to recast the roles to make story shortly after ROTJ but look, they've already re-cast Han Solo and Lando Calrissian (and Chewie, for that matter). Sebastian Stan would have been an easy drop-in for Hamill, leaving only the part of Leia, which could have been easily cast from such a wide range of excellent actresses working today.

But instead, Abrams and Kasdan chose to dump the past, dump any EU stories, start fresh, introduce "new" characters, which were basically clones of the original trilogy and use the past characters as a excuse to move forward.

The blame doesn't lie with Abrams or Kasdan, the blame lies with Kathleen Kennedy. She's the person that set the new Star Wars galaxy in motion and IMO, the only film so far that's "felt" like Star Wars is Rogue One.

The new trilogy is pointless.
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Right, I should clarify. JJ and KK are playing it safe from a “storytelling” perspective when they basically decided to reboot the original trilogy with mysteries that led to similar payoffs we already saw in Empire Strikes Back (Luke-Yoda, Vader-Emperor, Han-Space Chase, etc etc).

Rian just decided to subvert all of it to avoid rehashing ESB and to make sure this trilogy wasn’t a pale, listless shadow of the OT. Time will tell on whether or not that will be looked back upon favorably, but honestly - if this trilogy fails, I think that’s largely on KK for giving JJ carte blanche to reboot A New Hope.
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I'll stick with my final prediction of $600mm-$650mm domestic.

Wild guess is $700mm to $800mm foreign.
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Not that I read his novels, but part of me feels like Timothy Zahn should have had some input since he had a distinct take on the SW universe that stayed fairly close to Lucas' general views of what needed to be included in it.
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Two things....

1. It's "McLeod."

2. I think Megan Fox will win a best actress oscar before Dane gives you his address. :-)
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MEMES!


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This pretty much sums it all up nicely.
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This is now closing in on a $200 million domestic lag behind VII.

14 days in, VII was at $629m domestic
14 days in, VII is at $445m domestic

On the foreign front, VII ended up at over $1.1b, while VIII is at $447m, at what would seem to be more than the financial halfway point for the movie.
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How it compares to VII is irrelevant.

It was going to be impossible for any movie to outdo that giant.

As long as it's trending ahead of Rogue One, it's doing fine.
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