At the close of last weekend, we shockingly learned that Solo: A Star Wars Story, one of 2018’s most anticipated blockbusters, tanked at the box office. The Ron Howard-directed space western made just $84.7 million domestically during its opening weekend, a total worse than practically every Star Wars film released since the turn of the century, and a figure lower than that of Justice League ($93.8M), another hotly anticipated release that severely underwhelmed at the ticket booth.
Unfortunately, things are about to get much worse for the Anthology film, as Deadline’s reporting that it could struggle to hit $250 million domestically. At the moment, analysts are predicting a $30 million take on home turf this weekend, and with the weekend after that said to be even lower, $250 million is suddenly looking like an impossibility. Given that Solo needs to hit $500 million worldwide just to break even, this obviously isn’t good news.
In a year that’s seen three releases enter the domestic top thirty for all-time opening weekends, Deadpool 2 ($125M), Black Panther ($202M) and Avengers: Infinity War ($257M), the box office failure of Solo: A Stars Wars Story is only amplified that much more. And while it remains to be seen which direction Disney will head in from here, distribution chief Dave Hollis has now opened up about the film’s poor performance.
Speaking to THR the other day, he noted that Solo‘s failure to take off at the box office might have been due to releasing so close to the aforementioned Infinity War and Deadpool 2.
“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.”
In some ways, Hollis is probably right. I mean, movies are expensive to go to, especially with a family, and people simply can’t afford to shell out for that many trips to the theater in the span of 30 or so days. But beyond that, there are certainly a number of other reasons that lead to Solo: A Star Wars Story flopping.
From the drama behind the scenes to the confusing marketing campaign and of course, the very fact that most people just weren’t interested in the film to begin with, there was a lot working against Lucasfilm’s latest release. And while there’s nothing they can do now to fix it, it’ll be fascinating to see how they proceed with the franchise from here on out.