Star Wars Day 2023: Breaking Down Star Wars’ Box Office Performance and More by the Numbers

A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, George Lucas released A New Hope (then titled Star Wars). He thought it would only survive as a stand-alone release. Instead, Star Wars became a pop culture phenomenon that has produced many more beloved movies and TV shows over the last 45 years.

Since its Disney acquisition in 2012, the Star Wars galaxy has expanded faster than ever. To celebrate May the 4th and the continually growing Star Wars franchise, FinanceBuzz examined box office performance and how much total Star Wars content exists as movies and TV shows.

Key findings

• Episode IV – A New Hope made a 2,396% profit based on its inflation-adjusted budget and box office gross. That’s the most of any Star Wars movie.
• In total, there are more than 12,000 minutes, or 208 hours, of Star Wars content on Disney+. Movies account for only 14% of the total Star Wars content.
• The most highly acclaimed Star Wars movie is Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (94% on Rotten Tomatoes). The lowest-scoring movie is Episode I – The Phantom Menace (51%).
• Only one Star Wars movie, 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, has failed to turn a profit at the box office.
• Two Star Wars films, Episode IV – A New Hope and Episode VII –The Force Awakens, top the billion-dollar mark for box office gross when adjusted for inflation.
• 83% of all Star Wars movies and TV shows have been produced since 2010.

Star Wars at the box office

The Star Wars franchise has been a hit from the very beginning.

Film	Initial release year	Number of total domestic theatrical releases	Combined box office gross at time of release	Inflation-adjusted combined box office gross	Rotten Tomatoes critic score
Episode IV – A New Hope	1977	3	$460,998,507	$1,849,905,133	93%
Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back	1980	4	$292,753,960	$944,208,296	94%
Episode VI – Return of the Jedi	1983	3	$309,306,177	$885,749,351	83%
Episode I – The Phantom Menace	1999	2	$474,544,677	$842,377,685	51%
Episode II – Attack of the Clones	2002	2	$310,676,740	$521,767,213	65%
Episode III – Revenge of the Sith	2005	1	$380,270,577	$589,419,394	79%
Episode VII – The Force Awakens	2015	1	$936,662,225	$1,198,927,648	93%
Rogue One	2016	1	$532,177,324	$665,221,655	84%
Episode VIII – The Last Jedi	2017	1	$620,181,382	$756,621,286	91%
Solo: A Star Wars Story	2018	1	$213,767,512	$256,521,014	69%
Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker	2019	1	$515,202,542	$602,786,974	52%
Totals			$5,046,541,623	$9,113,505,650

The very first movie is still the highest-grossing film in the franchise (when adjusted for inflation). Between A New Hope’s initial 1977 release, a 1982 re-release, and the 1997 special edition release, the movie has brought in over $460 million at the box office. That equates to over $1.8 billion in 2023 dollars.

While both Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back and Episode VI – Return of the Jedi got close to topping the billion-dollar mark across multiple releases, only 2015’s Episode VII – The Force Awakens actually achieved billion-dollar status at the box office. The film grossed over $900 million at the time of release (nearly $1.2 billion in today’s dollars).

The Force Awakens marks the first movie released after Disney purchased the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas.

Comparing Star Wars’ critical reception and box office performance

Even the lowest rated Star Wars movies have earned scores of over 50% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, which is an impressive feat for a franchise with so many entries.

There is also some relationship between how well-reviewed a Star Wars movie is and how much money it makes. The four movies with Rotten Tomatoes scores over 90% have earned an inflation-adjusted $4.7 billion, which accounts for 52% of the $9.1 billion the entire Star Wars franchise has made at the box office. Those movies are:

• Episode IV – A New Hope
• Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back
• Episode VII – The Force Awakens
• Episode VIII – The Last Jedi

These four movies have averaged nearly $1.2 billion in sales at the box office, while the remaining seven movies with lower ratings from critics have averaged “just” $623 million in inflation-adjusted ticket sales.

Box office vs. budget

Of course, to see how profitable each Star Wars movie actually is, we need to factor in the amount of money it cost to make each movie.

Once again, A New Hope shines here. Even after factoring in the money spent to make the 1997 special edition, and adjusting for inflation, A New Hope still has the lowest budget of any Star Wars film at $74 million. With an inflation-adjusted $1.8 billion earned at the box office, that means A New Hope earned a profit of $1.7 billion for LucasFilm. That’s equivalent to 2,396% of the movie’s budget.

Even though budgets for the new Disney-produced movies balloon into the hundreds of millions of dollars, every Star Wars film except one has made at least $280 million in profit at the box office.

The only film that failed to hit the mark is also the only one that failed to turn a profit of any kind. 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story had an inflation-adjusted budget of $330 million but made just $256 million when it was released, at a loss of $73 million.

How much Star Wars content is currently available?

Thanks to Disney+ it’s easier than ever to watch Star Wars content. But how much time would it take fans to watch every single minute of TV and film content in the Star Wars franchise?

For the cost of Disney+ ($7.99 per month or $10.99 without ads), a subscriber has access to over 12,000 minutes of Star Wars TV and movies. That means it would take over 208 hours, or nearly nine full days, to watch every single minute of Star Wars content.

Recent Star Wars content includes TV shows set in the Star Wars galaxy. For every minute of Star Wars film content that exists, there are more than six minutes of TV content.

In fact, the Clone Wars series, which ran for seven seasons and 133 episodes, accounts for 3,000 minutes of content by itself. That’s more than twice as much as the 1,493 minutes that comprise the 11 theatrically released Star Wars movies.

The Clone Wars show shows a few different trends in the expansion of the Star Wars franchise. The show was first released in 2008 but the majority of its episodes were released in the 2010s before the show was revived in the 2020s.

That makes it a notable part of the trend of new Star Wars content being released in the last 15 years. As of this writing, more than 10,300 minutes of content — 83% of all official Star Wars content ever produced — has been released since 2010. That must be mind-blowing to fans who had to wait 16 years without any Star Wars content at all between the releases of Return of the Jedi and Episode I – The Phantom Menace.

The Clone Wars is also an animated production, which is common for Star Wars content at this point. While the franchise’s headliners are the live-action movies, 70% of all Star Wars content is animated. This includes shows such as The Bad Batch, Rebels, and Resistance joining Clone Wars as animated shows with multiple seasons and hundreds of minutes worth of stories set in the Star Wars galaxy.

How to save money, even in a galaxy far, far away

Here are some more ideas for how to get the most Star Wars bang for your buck:

• Get cash back for binge-watching: Streaming marathons can be productive for your wallet when you use the best credit card for streaming services to pay for your subscriptions.
• Invest in something you love: If you believe in the future of the Disney+ Star Wars empire, you can look into how to buy Disney stock.
• Apply for a rewards credit card. The best credit card for Disney could let you earn rewards to support your Star Wars habit.

Methodology

The overall amount of content was sourced from the runtimes for shows and movies as listed on IMDB. Box office totals and data on the number of domestic releases for each film were found via Box Office Mojo. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' CPI inflation calculator was used to calculate for inflation throughout. Critic scores were pulled from Rotten Tomatoes. All run times, ratings, and earnings data was collected in April 2023.