Fans across the globe are celebrating Star Wars Day today, and as May 4th hits new predictions suggest the next adventure in the saga could reach over $2 billion at the box office.
JJ Abrams' reboot doesn't hit cinemas until next December but the cast announcement this week has got analysts predicting that Episode VII could shoot into the top five highest grossing movies of all time.
The director announced this week that original stars Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill will join newcomers including Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Domhnall Gleeson in Episode VII, which starts shooting in the UK in the coming weeks.
Following the big news, industry analysts say the movie has a good shot at joining James Cameron's Avatar and Titanic in hitting $2 billion at the worldwide box office.
The Episode VII cast during their table read at Pinewood
"The casting for this new film is perfect from a commercial standpoint," BoxOffice.com Vice President and Senior Analyst Phil Contrino told TheWrap. "Bringing back the original cast is brilliant, because it cements the link with the franchise's incredible legacy, and so is going without A-list actors in the new roles, because it keeps the focus on the brand".
"It's a time-honored tradition for fans of that series to complain about George Lucas and any number of other things surrounding the franchise — and then they go to see the movies five times," Contrino added.
Avatar currently holds the number one spot on the highest grossing list with the 2009 movie raking in £2.7 million, Titanic is just behind with $2.1 billion.
The six previous Star Wars movies and their re-releases have brought in more than $4.5 billion at the box office, impressive but no film in the series has hit the $1 billion mark. The highest-grossing entry remains Episode I: The Phantom Menace, which took in $983 million globally in 1999.
Interestingly Episode VII's release date of December 18, 2015 is the same date that Avatar opened on five years ago. "That's significant, and ideal," Contrinoe explains, adding that the movie will have little competition unlike summer releases. "It will surely have a huge opening, but it will also have the whole month of January to keep on playing. I can't imagine a lot of other studios are going to get in its way."
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
