When Episode VII came out last year, we held a competition to see who could come closest to guessing the gross for the opening weekend. 11 people participated (9 people took it seriously) and it was a lot of fun. So in this thread, we'll guess the opening weekend gross for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

A couple of rules/guidelines:

1. You'e guessing the opening weekend gross (Thursday through Sunday) of Rogue One in the U.S. only.
2. Your guess should be rendered in whole-numbered millions only. So $100m is okay, so is $101m, so is $247m--but you can't guess any further digits (i.e., $100,500,700) and you can't guess halves or cents (so $105.5m is a no-go).
3. We're going to wait until final numbers come out after the end of the weekend--quite frequently, there will be an estimate put out on Sunday morning, but we're going to wait for the final numbers, which usually come late Monday/early Tuesday.
4. We're going to be using numbers from boxofficemojo.com
5. There are no prizes; you just get to gloat and know that you are better than anyone else.

To help you get a ballpark on big opening weekends from the past, here are some lists.





Previous Champions
2015 - zeb was only $2m off with his guess for Episode VII's opening gross (which was $247m) (post)

(I'm going to use the second post in the thread to keep track of guesses)

Current Guesses
strat: $8t
Kaius: $244m
LetMeSleep: $235m
chud: $224m
ruddo: $215m
Simple Torture: $198m
lenny: $194m
wease: $193m
Burt: $189m
ABNorman: $184m
dime: $179m
stip: $177m
EJ: $172m
durdencommatyler: $165m
daft twat: $147m
Citizen Dick: $142m
Argo: $134m
theplatypus: $127m
B: $8m

My guess: Star Wars is Star Wars, but the $200m threshold has only been broken 3 times, and each time they were huge event movies. This will do very well, but will fall short of that magic number--I'm guessing $198m

$224m

$194 million

8

Don't be the burt of this thread, B.

$189m

I don't care, but I wanted to play the game.

Seems like most outlets are predicting between $140-150 million domestic opening weekend. I'll side with the over on that, but I won't go as high as some of you are. I'll guess that there are plenty of folks out there who don't know what this is, or don't care, or aren't as amped because we had Ep 7 recently, or don't give a shit about anything that isn't Luke.

$165

And I'll hope I'm low by about $30 million. GO STAR WARS!

215 million

thank you for putting together this competition, s_t

I think you and the estimates have it low, Joey. The marketing campaign surely hasn't been as in-your-face as it was with Episode VII, but I still think people know it's coming out--I've talked to 50 year olds, 20 year olds, and 5 year olds who are pumped.

One hundred and twenty seven million dollars

is this your final answer?

Yes

good luck

I tried to find some projections people had published before Episode VII came out, and it appears that most people were capping their projections around $220m (i.e., still about $30m short). It'll be interesting if the projections for Rogue 1 miss too, and by how much if they do.

Sure. I believe you. But I've talked to 35 year olds, and 65 year olds who don't care and/or think this is Episode 8 and didn't care for Episode 7. I'm going to err on the low side to manage expectations. I fully, literally, expect this to be the best Star Wars film to date. I would love for this to make 200 million opening weekend. I really would. But what's the second highest December opening of all time behind The Force Awakens? Something like 85 million opening weekend? I'm playing the game and taking the under in hopes of winning while everyone else overshoots.

But nothing would make me happier than this movie far exceeding my prediction and even all of yours. May the force be with Rogue One.

Mark Ellis predicted 185. Honestly, that makes a lot of sense to me. But I wanted to go against the grain of this competition. But I think 185 is a really smart answer.