MOVIE NEWS – Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is perhaps one of the most successful spin-off movies ever. It’s certainly the biggest opener of 2016, producing in an estimated $71M on Friday, its first day in theaters. This also consist of the $29M it pulled in from Thursday night previews, which is the biggest preview night of 2016. With the year closing, we doubt anyone will be able to steal this record away from the Disney and Lucasfilm release.

Our only question now, will the movie continue to be strong with the Money as the weekend continues? Or will it weaken on its way to what should be a excellent Sunday? It could act like one of the Twilight movies, where it settles in and reaches a mighty fine $140 million over the course of these three days. Or it could improve even more and produce the money which are speculated by Box Office Mojo to be as high as $160.8M – comparably to what happened with The Dark Knight Rises. That superhero flick saw Thursday Night previews account for 40% of its Friday gross, yet finished stronger than it started. Most believe Rogue One will finish off this weekend with a score that is just barely able to crack the $160M thresh hold.

Rogue One had mixed reviews so far with a 66 at Metascore. It’s audience made up of 66% males versus 34% females, which is kind of funny, since this is the first ever Star Wars spin-off having a female lead character. Much of the audience was under 25.

You can read our review of Rogue One here.