We've known for a while that Star Wars: The Last Jedi wasn't performing particularly well in China but it's now pretty much official that the movie is a box office flop there. The Rian Johnson helmed released debuted to a disappointing $28.7 million but that dropped to $2.4 million by the following weekend, a shocking decline of 92% for a sequel which has performed well everywhere else.
Now, The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that The Last Jedi will be lucky to wind up with $50 million, a figure which is going to leave it as the 50th biggest movie of the year in the Middle Kingdom.
It's been beaten by the likes of Valerian and Geostorm and Jimmy Wu, the chairman of Chinese theater chain Lumiere Pavillions confirms that, "The Last Jedi has already been completely pulled from cinemas here. It’s performed much worse than we could have expected." That's got to hurt Disney and this clear lack of interest in Star Wars from moviegoers in China will hurt future instalments.
The numbers are blamed on the original Star Wars movies never being released in China and younger moviegoers there having no real interest in the franchise. It now remains to be seen whether or not Disney will think twice about releasing Solo: A Star Wars Story and Episode IX in the country.
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