Han Solo’s beloved Millennium Falcon may soar to great heights, but the film of his origin story has done anything but.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” is thus far the most unsuccessful entry in the rebooted Star Wars franchise by a wide margin. This weekend, the movie made an estimated $29.3 million, according to Box Office Mojo. That’s a 65 percent drop from its already-disappointing debut, which raked in $84.4 million (excluding Memorial Day).
The drop is particularly concerning since this marked the last weekend without a major debut, the calm before a storm of worthy competitors. “Incredibles 2,” “Ocean’s 8” and “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” all open during the next few weeks.
And while blockbusters on the Star Wars scale often recoup their money overseas even when suffering disappointing domestic box-office returns, “Solo” hasn’t fared well internationally either. The snarky “Deadpool 2,” which was released two weeks earlier, usurped the Star Wars film this weekend by earning $41.6 million to “Solo”‘s $30.3 million.
This is the first sign that Star Wars might not be the cash cow it was once considered.
When Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4 billion and installed Kathleen Kennedy as president, the company presented an aggressive strategy for the Star Wars franchise that echoed that of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It would release a canon film — meaning films that directly relate to the original trilogy — every couple of years. In between would be films branded as Star Wars stories, flicks that take place in the Star Wars universe but don’t affect the main plotline established by George Lucas in the 1970s.
Disney has unrolled these movies at an even quicker pace than expected. Since December 2015, it has released four Star Wars films: two canon (“The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi”) and two smaller stories (“Rogue One” and “Solo.”)
With the exception of “Solo,” the enterprise has proven to be tremendously successful.
By design, the canon films should rake in more dough, and indeed they have. To date, “The Force Awakens” has made more than $2 billion — yes, with a b — worldwide and nearly $1 billion here in the United States. Its opening weekend pulled in $247.9 million. “The Last Jedi,” a far more divisive film, garnered $1.3 billion worldwide and $620 million domestically. It earned $220 million on opening weekend.
But even “Rogue One,” a smaller story that, like “Solo,” survived a troubled production, earned more than a billion dollars worldwide. It opened to $155 million in ticket sales, a whopping $71 million more than “Solo.”
That’s particularly shocking considering that “Solo” centers around one of the most iconic and celebrated characters not just in Star Wars history, but in film history.
A number of factors likely contribute to the movie’s poor performance.
Its production can be politely termed a disaster, with directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (known for their meta-comedies “The Lego Movie” and “21 Jump Street”) being unceremoniously fired and replaced with steady-handed veteran Ron Howard.
Reviewers were fairly tepid on the film, if not downright brutal. The New Yorker’s Richard Brody wrote that “the tropes and twists of shamelessly recycled cliches are presented throughout with an absurd earnestness”; the A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd called it “intellectual property unconvincingly arranged into the shape of a movie”; and The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday cheekily opined, “let’s just say a robot is the best part.”
Still, it earned a 71 percent “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s considered good, even though it pales in comparison to the other three recent Star Wars films, which earned from 85 to 93 percent.
Perhaps the low box-office numbers have nothing to do with quality, but instead point to a Star Wars fatigue of sorts. “Solo” came out only five months after “The Last Jedi.” Where a new Star Wars film once felt like a monumental event, it’s becoming as par for the course as a new superhero flick.
The performance of “Solo” doesn’t necessarily point to a sea change, but it’s a striking departure from what Disney was growing used to.
Jeff Bock, senior box office analyst at Exhibitor Relations, told CNN earlier this week that not only does he suspect this will be the first new Star Wars that doesn’t break the billion-dollar mark, but that he doesn’t expect the film to earn $450 million before exiting theaters.
Read more: