After a second disappointing week at the box office, Solo: A Star Wars Story looks like it will be the first Star Wars film to be considered a flop.
When Solo: A Star Wars Story opened with a less than spectacular $101 million over the four-day Memorial Day holiday weekend, there were no doubt many concerned executives at both Lucasfilm and Disney. That number was down about $50 million from expectations and with the movie not doing well overseas, in particular China, it was looking more and more like Solo may be a box office flop.
However, many said wait and see what happens in Solo‘s second week of release. The film is still getting solid word of mouth, maybe the numbers can rebound and the movie can still live up to expectations.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.
Solo tumbled 65.5 percent in its second week and earned a decidedly mediocre $29 million. That was still good enough for first place at the weekend box office, but just barely.
To date Solo has made just $148 million at the domestic box office and when you add in the sluggish overseas numbers the total is an anemic $264 million.
To put that in some kind of perspective, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story made more than that in its first weekend in theaters.
At this point it is almost a certainty that the film has no chance to make back the $300 million it cost to make. Which means that Solo can now officially be called the first Star Wars film to be considered a box office bomb.
So what went wrong with Solo? It might take less time to list what went right.
There was the firing of original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller when filming was almost complete and as a result new director Ron Howard having to reshoot almost the entire film from scratch. Then there was the drubbing Star Wars: The Last Jedi took from the fan community and the fact Solo opened just 5 months after that film.
Add in that many fans didn’t see any need for a Han Solo origin film and were not shy about being very vocal about their opinion and you had a movie with a lot going against it from day one.
However, other films have had a troubled production and done just fine, Rogue One being the most obvious example. So what was it about Solo that made moviegoers stay home?
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Fans will no doubt debate that for years to come. And you can be sure Disney and Lucasfilm are having meetings as we speak, deciding if some kind of course correction might be necessary going forward for the future of Star Wars.
Whatever form that future may take, you can be relatively sure it won’t include a Solo sequel.
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