Disney’s five ‘Star Wars’ films have had mixed receptions, but ‘The Force Awakens’ was a force to be reckoned with. (Photo by Fred Duval/FilmMagic)
FilmMagic
Analysis of documents filed by Disney has revealed which of its Star Wars movies made the highest profits at the box office and, remarkably, it was the film with the highest costs.
Calculating the profit made by a movie requires knowing how much revenue it generated for the studio and how much it cost to make. The former is a matter of public knowledge through Amazon’s Box Office Mojo while the latter is usually a closely-guarded secret. That’s because when movies are made in the United States, studios combine the cost of them in their overall expenses and don’t disclose how much was spent on each one.
It’s a different story for movies which are filmed in the United Kingdom. Studios shooting in the U.K. get a reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the sum they spend in the country provided that at least 10% of the core cost of the production is incurred there. In order to demonstrate this to the U.K. authorities, studios set up separate production companies there to produce each movie they make in the country.
These companies have to file financial statements which shine a spotlight on the mysterious world of film finances as they disclose everything from the total cost of the production and the level of reimbursement to the number of people on the crew and even their social security payments.
Usefully, all of Disney’s Star Wars movies were made in the U.K. so their financial statements can be consulted to reveal their cost and the amount of reimbursement they received. Deducting the latter from the former gives the net spending by Disney but that is only half of the story.
Disney’s ‘Star Wars’ movies were all filmed in the U.K.(Photo by Adrian Dennis-WPA Pool/Getty IMages)
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Calculating the profit requires knowing the revenue the studio received from the movies. The vast majority of this of course comes from theater ticket sales though studios don’t get all of the takings.
The amount that theaters pay to studios is known in the trade as a rental fee and an indication of the typical level comes from film industry consultant Stephen Follows who interviewed 1,235 film professionals in 2014 and concluded that, according to studios, theaters keep 49% of the takings on average. This research lends weight to a 50-50 split which is widely acknowledged in the industry.
It is important to note that the share of the box office isn’t a studio’s only return from a movie. As a Disney spokesperson told this reporter last year, “there will be other income generated by the production (such as DVD/Blu Ray sales, merchandising, etc.). It’s not reflecting a true account of whether the film was overall profitable.”
However, just as the production generates other income, it also incurs other costs, chief of which are marketing expenses which are not shown in the financial statements of the production companies. Accordingly, if the home entertainment and merchandise sales should be added to the theater takings, the marketing cost should be deducted from them and it is understood that blockbuster sums were spent on the Star Wars movies.
Disney doesn’t disclose how much it spends on marketing each picture while the merchandise and streaming sales are tough to attribute to specific productions. A great deal of the former carries the overall Star Wars brand, rather than the names of specific movies and streaming viewers don’t pay to watch each one of them.
Deducting the net spending on a movie by the studio from its share of the theater takings yields the profit at the box office. That’s not all.
Merchandise sales boost the profits of a movie series like ‘Star Wars’. (Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)
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The results can also be used to calculate the return on investment for each movie. There’s a simple formula for doing this. In short, if someone invests $100 in a project and gets back $50 they lose 50% of their money. If they get back $100 they have broken even with zero profit. However, if they get back $150 they make a 50% profit, or a 50% Return On Investment (ROI) as it is known in the trade.
Accordingly, calculating the ROI involves deducting the investment (the net spending on the movie) from the studio’s share of the takings and dividing the remainder by the net sum that it spent.
There are distinct differences between profit and ROI. If a studio invests a low amount in a movie it is much easier for it to generate a high ROI. All it takes is for a movie which cost a net $10,000 to generate $50,000 at the box office and that gives the studio $25,000 of the takings and a $15,000 profit with a 150% ROI.
Since Disney bought Star Wars’ rightsholder Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012, it has made five movies about the sci-fi saga and the one with the lowest costs had the highest ROI. This can be seen in the chart below which shows that 2016’s Star Wars spinoff Rogue One made a massive 95.4% ROI on costs of $327.5 million (£240 million).
Return on Investment of Disney’s ‘Star Wars’ movies
MSM
At the other end of the spectrum, 2019’s The Rise Of Skywalker only had a 9.9% ROI as its costs came to an eyewatering $593.7 million (£450.2 million) as this report recently revealed.
It was the second most-expensive of Disney’s Star Wars movies after 2015’s The Force Awakens, the first in its new trilogy of films. The Force Awakens teamed up rising stars Daisy Ridley and John Boyega with Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and the late Carrie Fisher who headlined the original movies more than 30 years earlier.
With costs of $638.9 million (£452 million), The Force Awakens is comfortably Disney’s most expensive Star Wars movie and one of the most expensive films in history. Remarkably it is also one of the most profitable. This is no mean feat.
If a movie costs $10 million to make all it takes is for it to gross $50 million at the box office and the studio will get $25 million which leaves it with a $15 million profit. But if a movie cost $600 million to make it has to gross a whopping $1.23 billion at the box office just to make the same $15 million profit. Accordingly, higher costs set a higher barrier for profit but The Force Awakens passed it with flying colors.
‘The Mandalorian & Grogu’ will be the first ‘Star Wars’ movie since 2019. © 2025 Lucasfilm Ltd™. All Rights Reserved.
LUCASFILM
It was the first Star Wars movie in a decade and the pent-up interest helped it to gross a staggering $2.07 billion at the box office giving Disney a $1.035 billion share. The studio also got a $103.4 million (£73.5 million) reimbursement bringing its net spending on the movie down to $535.5 million. That left Disney with a $500 million profit, comfortably eclipsing the returns from any of its other Star Wars movies.
In contrast, The Rise Of Skywalker made a profit of just $48.3 million at the box office and followed Solo: A Star Wars story in 2018 which made a $103.3 million loss. It explains why Star Wars has stayed off the silver screen for the past six years but it will return in 2026 with The Mandalorian & Grogu. It is based on Disney’s hit streaming series The Mandalorian and the studio will be hoping that the pent-up interest in the saga will give it another happy ending at the box office.
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