How have Disney Star Wars movies performed in terms of profitability? Disney bought Star Wars in 2012, and the House of Mouse initially intended to run at least one Star Wars movie a year. Those plans didn’t work out, with missteps over the anthologies and a controversial end to the sequel trilogy.

Forbes‘ Caroline Reid has just published estimates of the profitability of Disney’s Star Wars movies. The figures take advantage of the fact Disney filmed these films in the U.K., where financial statements are publicly available. Forbes has then used a simple calculation, ᴀssuming Disney recouped half the box office takings.

The reality will be a little different, of course. These movies released worldwide, and some territories have explicit rules governing how much of the revenue goes to theater chains. Meanwhile, it’s common for large studios to push for a greater amount of the takings for blockbusters, and Disney is known to have done this with Star Wars.

These figures naturally only cover post-theatrical distribution, and they do not include merchandise. Still, they’re the best figures we’re going to get; so here’s every Star Wars movie in terms of profitability.

5

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Starring Alden Ehrenreich as the young Han Solo, Solo was the first Star Wars movie to make a loss. There’s been a sort of public inquest, with Lucasfilm insisting the problem was mostly due to people not being ready for a recast. In reality, the movie never had a strong concept and expensive reshoots reportedly doubled Solo‘s budget.

Solo released after a vocal backlash to The Last Jedi and around the same time as Avengers: Infinity War. Lackluster marketing pretty much doomed it; Disney seemed to believe a Star Wars movie could never fail, and learned the truth the hard way.

4

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker

This is not the way the sequel trilogy was supposed to end. The Rise of Skywalker made a profit, but it was nothing like big enough; it came after the controversy of The Last Jedi and the box office failure of Solo. Given this performance, it’s easy to see why Lucasfilm pivoted away from the big screen for the last six years.

3

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

A critical darling, Rogue One would likely have had an even better ROI if not for substantial reshoots. “Rogue [One] it was like, ‘There’s a corpse on the table, what are you gonna do? Could someone come in and save it?’“ Tony Gilroy recently recalled discussing the reshoots.

Given that troubling context, Rogue One‘s success shows how healthy the Star Wars brand was back in 2016. The movie was certainly helped by a crowd-pleasing (and unforgettable) final scene featuring Darth Vader’s return to the big screen after over a decade.

2

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Depending on who you ask, The Last Jedi was either the last unvarnished success of the Disney era or the moment where everything went wrong. The box office suggests the former, but a vocal backlash in the fandom after TLJ preceded diminishing returns for future films.

The Star Wars fandom has always been divided and divisive (anyone who was part of it for the prequels will remember how that played out). But there’s still so much heat and so little light when it comes to discussing The Last Jedi, perhaps signifying that something has permanently broken. Only time will tell whether Disney can fix this fandom.

1

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was Disney’s most expensive movie, which makes sense; the sheer scale was unprecedented, and Lucasfilm needed to create a film pipeline from scratch. But it was also an unprecedented cinematic event, a once-in-a-generation lightning strike, and it is Disney’s most profitable Star Wars film.

“Looking back with the perspective of several years and a few more Star Wars films, I believe J.J. [Abrams] achieved the near-impossible,” Disney CEO Bob Iger recalled in his 2019 autobiography, The Ride of a Lifetime, “creating a perfect bridge between what had been and what was to come.“