Having gone into the weekend tracking a global opening in excess of $300 million, Disney and Lucasfilm’s latest Star Wars offering Solo: A Star Wars Story failed to reach half of that figure with a global opening of just $148 million through to Sunday, and a further $20 million from North American on the Memorial Day Monday.
It’s certainly an underwhelming number for a Star Wars movie – or any movie carrying a $250 million price tag – and speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney’s head of distribution Dave Hollis has commented on the film’s performance and where they might have went wrong with this latest chapter in the Saga.
“We have a lot of work to do in trying to understand this. We are all over it and will spend a lot of time digging into why things happened the way they did in various markets. We have a year and a half before Episode IX comes out… There’s a question of frequency, and how many times people will go to the movies. Is this too much and too soon for a third time in a five-week period? Let’s measure how we feel about this until more time passes.”
Releasing Solo so close to Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2 (not to mention the upcoming Incredibles 2 and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) was always going to be risky, as was debuting it just five months after Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a film that – while critically and commercially successful – did leave many fans cold. At this point, it would be a big surprise if Disney and Lucasfilm don’t opt to stick to December for future Star Wars movies, given the strong performance for The Force Awakens, Rogue One and The Last Jedi at the end of the year.
What do you think went wrong for Solo? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below…
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A new adventure with the most beloved scoundrel in the galaxy. Through a series of daring escapades deep within a dark and dangerous criminal underworld, Han Solo meets his mighty future copilot Chewbacca and encounters the notorious gambler Lando Calrissian, in a journey that will set the course of one of the Star Wars saga’s most unlikely heroes.
Solo: A Star Wars Story features Alden Ehrenreich (Hail, Caesar!) as the famous smuggler, Donald Glover (Atlanta) as Lando Calrissian, Woody Harrelson (War for the Planet of the Apes) as Tobias Beckett, Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca, Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) as L3-37, Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) as Qi’Ra, Thandie Newton (Westworld) as Val, Ian Kenny (Sing Street) as Rebolt, Harley Durst (Wonder Woman) as Moloch, Jon Favreau (Spider-Man: Homecoming) as Rio Durant, Paul Bettany (Avengers: Infinity War) as Dryden Vos and Warwick Davis (Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi) as Weazel.
