Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Is Now the Third Most Expensive Movie Ever Made

Six years after its release, Disney has officially confirmed that the final cost of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has reached an eye-watering $593.7 million. This makes it the third most expensive film ever made, just behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Jurassic World: Dominion. 

The figure, within Reylo kissing distance of $600 million, now includes total production costs. It’s a wild amount of money to spend on a film, albeit a blockbuster trilogy-capper, but it would arguably be easier to swallow if the movie had been, well, good (other opinions are available).

There are also plenty of caveats to the figure, and they’re detailed over at Forbes. Basically, thanks to a mix of U.K. tax incentives, staggered financial statement filings, and reduced time spent on post-production efforts like reshoots and editing, the movie may not have actually lost Disney money. However, we don’t really know if it made them much money either, as they tend to be tight-lipped about that kind of information.

A billion and change at the box office sounds like a decent profit on $593.7 million, but Forbes guesstimates that The Rise of Skywalker only scraped a $48.6 million profit there. Home entertainment and merch sales add some coins to the pot, but then marketing costs drain some away again.

The film, directed by J.J. Abrams, was the final installment of the Skywalker saga and aimed to conclude the trilogy that began with The Force Awakens in 2015. Despite high expectations, The Rise of Skywalker received mixed reviews from critics and audiences, leading to endless discussions about it. If you’ve strayed near any Rise of Skywalker comment section either before or since its release, you’ll likely have also seen at least one person blaming Rian Johnson’s previous installment, The Last Jedi, for some of Skywalker’s problems. Jedi may have left Lucasfilm in a somewhat odd narrative spot with the trilogy, but certainly not odd enough to justify most of the story decisions in Skywalker (again, other opinions are available).

Since the release of Skywalker, Lucasfilm has announced a string of movies, and the majority have so far come to nothing. They have definitely found further success on streaming with shows like The Mandalorian, and it’s Mando and his wee green sprog that have paved Star Wars’ path back to the multiplex with The Mandalorian & Grogu in 2026.