A selection of a dozen Freaks members could have been the co-heads of LFL for the past 3 years and it would still be at $3B+.
It's the return of Star Wars, a following-on of the OT with the original OT cast.
Despite breathy billions-bamboozled "journalists" reporting over the past year or so, Disney is yet to pay off their $4.1B purchase price for the Star Wars brand - almost six years later. It's the reason they have been pushing these releases closer and upping their theatrical take and merch take % demands. Their stock price has been pretty stagnant.
They've earned about $2.2B in rentals, maybe $1.0-1.3B in merch royalties (that percentage varies from under 10 to 20%) and another $0.5-0.7B in home video which is pretty much to that $4.1B with other ancilliaries except when you take into account corp interest and overhead for six years.
It's probably roughly in line with what Disney expected, but the issue is that the brand feels totally exhausted after only four releases - "brand fatigue" just doesn't seem to apply to MCU - and it's had its first major failure (after a deeply divisive previous release that pancaked in its latter weeks after a big opneing) and so the movies seem to be increasingly out of step with the fanbase.
You only get "the return of SW" and "the return of the OT heroes" once, and that's done. Kathleen Kennedy has ridden through the honeymoon period, but that's now over and Disney knows it. The huge challenge is where SW goes from here, and it's going to take some major strategy and thought - not resting on laurels of the OT as Disney's SW has done up to now..
