Wipe Them Out. All of Them.

Posted by Bret on 10/24/18 at 02:51 PM Category: The Rise of Skywalker

Some interesting maneuvering of film release dates has seemingly cleared away much of the competition for holiday box office dollars in 2019, which should give Episode IX a much easier path to box office glory than The Last Jedi. Besides being the 3rd film in the trilogy, which meant respective big jumps from the box office takes of both The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones, it's also probably the last Skywalker film.

Notable moves in the 2019 holiday schedule:

Wonder Woman 1984 was set to open on November 1, 2019 but it is now moved to June 5, 2020.

James Bond 25 was moved from November 9, 2019 to February 14, 2020.

Terminator jumps up from November 15th to November 1st (after already moving from November 22nd).

Wonder Woman was perhaps looking to take advantage of the Summer 2020 slot now that Marvel has Guardians of the Galaxy 3 on hold. James Bond moved due to directorial change. It's possible that Terminator bumped forward in order to give some breathing room before Star Wars IX.

Frozen 2 (November 27th) and Jumanji 3 (December 13th) are probably the films that have the biggest crossover audiences, but with Episode IX opening after both, it could be the film of choice for the Christmas holiday, and eat into 2nd or 3rd purchases for the other 2 films.

Forbes.com has more.