Something was bothering me about the worldwide totals, we know the US market was soft on The Last Jedi to the tune of 30-40% but TLJ only recently hit $1 billion worldwide,The Force Awakens was a $2 billion Box Office movie with foreign markets providing $1.1 billion. So I wondered what is happening with the world market?
I picked 13 of the bigger Box Office countries to try to get a flavor of what is going on, we also need to keep in mind foreign exchange rates can change these totals. Many countries actually list sales by tickets sold so if somebody cares to look this up that way it should be a more accurate index.
First analysis many of the foreign opening weekends are the same, very close, or better for TLJ. Two of the biggest markets, UK & China we relativity poor first weekend but with good holdover should continue on to very respectable number. In almost all instances the foreign box office drops off propitiously after the first weekend. We will have to wait a few weeks for BO Mojo to update the data so we can have a 4 to 5 week average for all the countries. The way it looks now TLJ was off to a good start in many countries then ran out of steam. Possible causes : Star Wars fatigue (three Star Wars movies in three years), Foreign competition, Bad exchange rates, National crisis as in South Korea’s case, Poor reaction to the story.
Personally I believe it is the product and not the packaging because the reaction worldwide has a steady constant. If it were just the oversaturation of the Star Wars brand the market should have withheld good openings.
You can decide for yourself.
Force Awakens (2015)
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- UK opening weekend $56,868,789 : Week #4 $164,032,994
- China opening weekend $52,348,430 : Week #5 $125,398,521
- Germany opening weekend $27,226,974 : Week #4 $93,332,171
- Japan opening weekend $10,158,486 : Week #5 $75,391,571
- France opening weekend $21,378,320 : Week #4 $72,751,395
- Australia opening weekend $20,596,568 : Week #4 $57,892,807
- Italy opening weekend $7,483,161 : Week #4 $27,962,550
- Russia opening weekend $12,400,375 : Week #4 $25,350,930
- Brazil opening weekend $8,161,556 : Week #4 $24,794,983
- Mexico opening weekend $8,117,627 : Week #4 $26,311,168
- South Korea opening weekend $6,707,133 : Week #4 $23,188,593
- Spain opening weekend $8,688,660 : Week #4 $33,041,178
- Sweden opening weekend $3,945,455 : Week #5 $18,756,685
- Opening Weekend Total $244,081,534
- Total $768,205,546
- Approximate Number of Tickets Sold 91,127,586 (Base on 2015 Average US Ticket Price)
Last Jedi (2017)
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- UK opening weekend $37,378,914 : Week #4 $102,936,971
- China opening weekend $28,702,843 : Week #3 $41,250,422
- Germany opening weekend $23,329,092 : Week #4 $73,441,820
- Japan opening weekend $14,363,394 : Week #5 $58,319,509
- France opening weekend $18,815,562 : Week #4 $57,718,384
- Australia opening weekend $16,036,588 : Week #4 $40,395,207
- Italy opening weekend $5,411,401 : Week #4 $17,667,995
- Russia opening weekend $8,439,885 : Week #4 $15,254,411
- Brazil opening weekend $7,167,845 : Week #4 $17,881,960
- Mexico opening weekend $6,670,787 : Week #4 $13,153,554
- South Korea opening weekend $5,174,168 : Week #4 $8,088,892
- Spain opening weekend $8,542,998 : Week #4 $23,241,840
- Sweden opening weekend $5,992,286 : Week #5 $15,097,441
- Opening Weekend Total $186,025,763
- Total $484,448,406
- Approximate Number of Tickets Sold 54,007,626 (Based on 2017 Average US Ticket Price)
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Difference between Opening Weekends: $58,055,771
Difference after 4 Weeks: $283,757,140 (Only markets not compared at 4 weeks were because the data was missing or the movie was pulled from theaters)
Difference in Opening Weekend Ticket Sales: 8,215,261 (TFA 28,953,919 vs. TLJ 20,738,658)
Difference in 4 Week Ticket Sales: 37,119,960
Final Analysis: Lower than expected opening weekend in the UK and China hurt the over all foreign box office, except for this the two Star Wars films were close in opening weekend performance. In the four week comparison The Last Jedi loses momentum very quickly, selling approximately 30 million fewer tickets foreign than The Force Awakens over the same amount of time. Currency exchange rates can affect this comparison however not enough for the results we are seeing.