It wasn’t the waning interest that led to these totals though. It was the quality of the film. Again, I don’t think any of those predictions were being made under the assumption the film in question would be the most poorly reviewed Star Wars since The Phantom Menace. Had the film been at the quality level of even Solo, those numbers wouldn’t have borne out.
All the numbers showed interest in the brand was waning well before TROS release, hence my prediction at the time. Good reviews might have boosted the numbers somewhat, but even the opening weekend indicated a final BO of around the 1 billion mark. Also, let’s not forget TPM’s inflation adjusted BO is $1.8 billion, the third most financially successful film in the franchise, so evidently the financial success of a Star Wars film is not strongly correlated with its reviews.