Well, the pocs in international markets seem pretty unimpressed so far.
You’re actually wrong imo - almost every runaway successful media property today caters to women aside from the very largest mindless blockbusters. And certainly female centered fan community are all but immeasurably preferable to their male centered counterparts.
The problem is that those communities focus on characters and relationships. And aside from Ray’s potential botched hooking up with shirtless Kyle, she was basically a passive nobody this time around until the end, reacting to and giving others the limelight. TLJ was pretty thin pickings for female centered fan communities aside from Rose’s character, and for some reason she and Finn were written as sad sack small people who don’t “get” the big picture despite having their hearts in the right places.
Rogue One made about half of its $1 billion overseas. I think Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang had a lot to do with that.
Yep, that was an intentional choice they talked about before the movie’s release. But that was three movies ago, and the most recent two whiffed.
If that’s the case, Kennedy will keep her job and keep up with the “female appeal” strategy, and Disney will be happy with her. I’m interested to see what happens due to my affection for the franchise.
The Last Jedi made more overseas than domestic. Their casting strategy seemed to work there too.
Han Solo didn’t appeal overseas, but then again I didn’t see any Asian casting there either.
I’m going by memory, but it seems that TLJ performed much more poorly than TFA overseas. But I do note that it’s typical for films that aren’t niche productions to have more foreign box office than domestic anymore (IIRC, comedies for example translate poorly), so I’m not sure that’s a presuasive metric for Disney.
To be fair i see it today as less a strategy and more a reality.
And also the level of engagement and participation for female driven content is just… significantly higher. Women respond, especially socially connected young women, extremely enthusiastically to female led, female directed, successfully executed progressive media. It’s kind of the opposite for men; it seems like men just count rivets and don’t show up (aside from superhero films) or just wait and watch it later when it’s cheaper.
The tricky thing is threading the needle; there’s a level of female content that quickly crosses the event horizon into “not for me” territory for men. But that shouldn’t be hard to thread in mindless sci fi compared to a slow burn TV series.
That’s absolutely true, there’s plenty of money to be made in writing for the female audience. But I’m not as convinced that every media property must therefore be converted to a female-primary one.
If men show up in droves, then it wouldn’t be. It’s not just “critically” successful, it’s economically successful. There still is a market for the Joe Rogan working class guy that shows up to a Michael Bay movie to watch the gymrats who are their highest aspirations to become in life beat shit up. But they’re increasingly a locked-in market with those endless superhero films they’ve been channeled into loving.
Here’s some data from boxofficemojo.com. I don’t know why Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi aren’t being listed, though.
Edit:
Empire Strikes back was 54% domestic/46% foreign gross. Total of $538 million
ROTJ was 65% domestic/35% foreign gross. Total of $475 million
| Rank | Title | Studio | Worldwide | Domestic / % | Overseas / % | Year^ | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Star Wars: The Force Awakens | BV | $2,068.20 | $936.70 | 45.30% | $1,131.60 | 54.70% | 2015 |
| 11 | Star Wars: The Last Jedi | BV | $1,332.50 | $620.20 | 46.50% | $712.40 | 53.50% | 2017 |
| 25 | Rogue One: A Star Wars Story | BV | $1,056.10 | $532.20 | 50.40% | $523.90 | 49.60% | 2016 |
| 30 | Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace | Fox | $1,027.00 | $474.50 | 46.20% | $552.50 | 53.80% | 1999^ |
| 64 | Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith | Fox | $848.80 | $380.30 | 44.80% | $468.50 | 55.20% | 2005^ |
| 81 | Star Wars | Fox | $775.40 | $461.00 | 59.50% | $314.40 | 40.50% | 1977^ |
| 119 | Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones | Fox | $649.40 | $310.70 | 47.80% | $338.70 | 52.20% | 2002^ |
| 498 | Solo: A Star Wars Story | BV | $271.30 | $155.90 | 57.50% | $115.40 | 42.50% | 2018 |
This shows that Star Wars movies have always underperformed internationally relative to other blockbusters, which are often 33/66 US/international. But they’ve been pretty consistent at 45-50% US revenue.
Edit:
Here’s some more interesting data. Estimated domestic tickets sold:
- Star Wars - 178 million
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens - 108 million
- Empire Strikes Back - 98 million
- Return of the Jedi - 94 million
- SW Episode I - 86 million
- Star Wars: The Last Jedi - 68 million
- Rogue One - 60 million
- SW Episode III - 60 million
- SW Episode II - 52 million
- Solo - 17 million
So what this says to me is that revenue numbers are hiding the real problem: getting butts in the seats. The last three Disney-owned Star Wars movies are among the five worst ticket sellers in the franchise’s history. Sure, it’s early days for Solo, but they’re not going to sell another 50 million tickets. It will be the worst of the franchise for sure.
Cool, thanks for taking the time. That would have TLJ earning 64% of what TFA earned worldwide, while earning 66% of TFA’s take domestically. That’s pretty close, but I would be concerned with TLJ’s drop to 62% of what TFA made overseas. It also makes R1’s 50/50 split look a little less impressive.
And the drop from R1 to Solo can’t be making Disney happy about the “SW story” concept thus far.
I wonder if this money blah-blah will scotch any work on the rumored Boba Fett and Obi-Wan films. I’d be bummed if we missed out on a shot to get Ewan back in the saddle on last time.
My wife is a gigantic Star Wars nerd. A lot more than me. We both grew up on the original movies and loved them, but she really went gangbusters for them. She bought a ton of merch, went to cons, etc.
I wouldn’t say TLJ killed her fandom, but it put a damper on it. She was the one that suggested we didn’t need to see Solo on opening night. Not seeing a Star Wars movie immediately was an unthinkable proposition a few years ago.
Exactly the same way I feel. I have nothing else in common with your wife, FWIW. Feel the need to write that.
I was a little taken aback when she said we could wait on Solo. I was fine with not rushing out, but it just felt a bit, I don’t know… Sad, I guess? Like, this was something that used to mean a lot to her, and she wasn’t even excited anymore.
That was my gf after HP Book 7 and the switch to Capaldi on Doctor Who. Turned things she was a massive fan of and that we really connected into…something much less in her eyes. Blah. I miss being excited about that stuff together :-(
IMO, Mr. Gillen’s Darth Vader run is some of the best Star Wars of the last 5-10 years. The first two volumes are on Kindle Unlimited, and the first is also on Prime Reading.
Although this is confusing me even more: