The Force Awakens Box Office Thread: $1,73B

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Lawlight said:

DakonBlackblade said:

Theres more than just that, the marketing campaing and keeping the mistery about the plot worked wonders, but theres also nostalgia and the fact that Eps 1-3 sucked at play, if 1-3 had been great I dont think ppl would have this much craving for a new Star Wars, itd sell super well but I dont think it would be this insane. Also the reviews both professionaly and by viewers and the word of mouth have been generaly favorable wich helpped a lot as well.

 

Sure that helps too but not as much as marketing. Look at Jurassic World - the franchise was dead but the marketing pushed to a $1.7B movie.

In any case, Star Wars won't have legs outside of the US - it grossed less in RotW than the US during this past week-end. It will need some serious legs in the US and some $500M from China to come close to Avatar.

Jurassic World made a lot of money because it was a straight forward sequel to the *first* Jurassic Park movie ... which is what a lot of people wanted. 

Marketing budgets don't make blockbusters, if it was that easy, every studio would simply just push put a $200 million dollar marketing budget behind a movie to get a $1.7 billion dollar return ... that's a trade off every studio would make every time. 

The fact is it's not that easy. 

Terminator 4 had a huge marketing budget too ... it didn't make a lot of money. 

You need to have a good movie to start with 95% of the time.

Franchises like Star Wars are extremely rare and hard to come by, if you could just make one from a big marketing budget, every studio would love to do it, I'm sure. I'm sure Paramount, Warner, etc. would have no problem spending even $500 million on a picture if it meant a gaurunteed huge franchise of Star Wars' caliber.