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thismeintiel on 18 March 2018
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TheDarkShape said:

I'm not going to argue TLJ's reception, because it did burn a lot of people. (I do think it's weird to say the expectation was 750/1.7 - 700-750m domestically was totally doable, but that's expecting a pretty small drop internationally, especially when Rogue One showed Star Wars has no pull whatsoever in China - my prediction was 704/1.4, expecting the same 50/50 split RO had)

But toy-wise, where was the appeal? All of the heroes look exactly the same as they did in The Force Awakens. Why would you buy your kids new toys that look the same as the ones they already have?

(I wonder if Ep IX is going to have a ton of costume changes to try to rectify the toy issue)

RO is a spinoff.  Of course it's not going to have the same draw as a main installment of the franchise.  Though, as this thread shows, TLJ is suffering some extremely poor legs, as RO has been outperforming it overall for the past 2+ months.  Still, if anything, TFA shows that SW can have a decent draw from China.  It made $124.2M there, after a $52.3M opening, which is a 2.4x multiplier.  Obviously, the Chinese didn't exactly like TLJ, either.  It opened up lower than RO, with just $28.1M.  Even if it opened lower, if it still enjoyed the same multiplier, it should have made $67.4M.  Instead it was pulled out of theatres the next week, only making $42.6M.  If Disney was attempting to expand SW's popularity in China, TLJ was not the film to do it with.

BOM and movie analysts stated that TLJ was safely going to do $750M+ because of the fact it launched only 11.3% behind TFA.  It would have fallen down to 20% behind over the rest of its run to just make $750M.  No one really expected that kind of drop, which is why the range was given.  Most probably thought the max it was going to fall was ~15%-18%, which would have been ~$768.1M-796.2M, but left open the possibility of it doing even more if held. 

Same goes for WW,  TLJ opened 17.9% below TFA.  If it had held, it would have made ~$929M.  That's what gives you the range of ~$1.7B-1.8B.  What's very telling is that even after the large 2nd weekend drop, analysts thought that the film would still be able to hit $1.6B WW.