For most of the U.S., we spent the long weekend celebrating Memorial Day by having a BBQ, hanging out with family and friends, and just having a good time during the unofficial kick-off to summer. However, Disney wishes we all went to the movies to see “Solo: A Star Wars Story.” With weekend box office estimates that are disappointing, to say the least, Memorial Day weekend wasn’t a time of celebration at the Mouse House. It was a time to figure out what went wrong.
According to one executive over at Disney, it wasn’t that ‘Solo’ was a lackluster film or the supposed “Star Wars Fatigue” that you might hear bandied about, that caused such low box office totals. No, it was “Avengers: 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?” says Disney distribution chief Dave Hollis said to The Hollywood Reporter this weekend.
It’s natural to find a scapegoat for ‘Solo’ underwhelming. Hollis thinks that ‘Infinity War’ coming out April 27, combined with “Deadpool 2” coming out only two weeks ago, caused fewer people to buy an already-expensive movie ticket. Is he right? Sure, the summer movie congestion definitely affects box office totals. But as we said above, there’s a variety of factors at play with the monetary performance of ‘Solo.’
Ultimately, Hollis knows there’s more to the story, and said, “Let’s measure how we feel about this until more time passes.”
However, even with the weak domestic performance of ‘Solo,’ the real troubling part (albeit not all that surprising) is the film’s performance overseas, particularly in China. For those that aren’t box office nerds, China has become a crucial territory for studios hoping to recoup their investment.
For a film with a budget approaching $200 million (or perhaps over $300 million, in the case of ‘Solo’), you need a really strong turnout from Chinese audiences to cover costs. And in the case of ‘Solo,’ the film absolutely was a dud in that country, only earning approximately $10.1 million this weekend.
“We have a lot of work to do in trying to understand this,” says Hollis. “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.”
It’s obvious that ‘Episode IX’ will probably do better than the dismal ‘Solo’ totals in China. However, the truth is that the country just isn’t as in love with “Star Wars” as the rest of the world. And really, unlike the Marvel films, the only country that truly treats “Star Wars” films with any sort of event status is the US.
Another reason fans might point at the bad box office performance of ‘Solo’ is the change in directors. As we’ve talked about numerous times, Lucasfilm fired Phil Lord and Chris Miller during the tail-end of production on the film, replacing the duo with Ron Howard. According to most every report, the cause was Lord and Miller’s vision not syncing up with what the studio was looking for.
And according to ScreenCrush, this all came to a head at last year’s Star Wars Celebration, where Lord and Miller were expected to release a trailer. The report says that the directors had a trailer ready to go, but Lucasfilm nixed it. ScreenCrush says that the studio wasn’t happy with it, and as we know, the duo was fired two months later.
Now we wait for the fan uprising, calling for the “Lord and Miller Cut” of ‘Solo.’ Obviously, that will never happen, for a variety of reasons. Let’s just say this was not the best holiday weekend over at Disney.
It seems obvious the response to Solo is about the reaction to the quality of the movies Disney has been putting out, namely the extremely unoriginal Force Awakens and the almost insulting Last Jedi.
I think the best comparison to Solo is Justice League. They’re not the worst of their franchise but they suffered because of the quality of the films that preceded them.
I stayed away from Solo as a form of protest about the lack of quality in Disney’s SW franchise.
What about Marvel, also owned by Disney?
I meant to say Disney’s SW franchise specifically, as I did in the 3rd sentence
Shitty movie, that’s all.
Disney didn’t want the Phil Lord/Chris Miller movie so they hired Ron Howard to be their ‘corporate’ movie director. He followed Disney orders and now Disney doesn’t want to take responsibility for a bad movie completely in line with the expectations created by Last Jedi.
The quality of the film aside, had the movie been released in December, I think we would be seeing different returns. It was only 5 months ago that THE LAST JEDI was released. When you’re not mixing up tone and aesthetic the way MARVEL is, the general movie-going public’s anticipation just won’t be there.
Lucasfilms has failed on a number of fronts here
– Yes scheduling was stupid. If they had waited to December they would have had a wide open fireld. Arrogance to do otherwise.
– The fans were really upset about Last Jedi. Moreso than Lucasfilms and Kennedy will willingly admit. In a franchise the next films numbers are based on the last films reception. They may have all paid and gone to see TLJ. But they didn’t like what they saw. The audience took a wait and see with this one.
– It was a movie nobody wanted. The Shills keep schrieking “It was the Han Solo Movie!!!” NO! What it was and was very clearly to the viewers was “Butch and Sundance the Early Years”. Recast the generations finest actor with some punk kid who’s only dramatic skill is to annoy. You made the fans yearn for the golden days of JarJar!
– Marketing was awful. Nobody after seeing those trailers wanted to see this movie. Nobody!
– Messaging was awful and the studio lost messaging control. You had Rian Johnson accusing the entire core fanbase of heinous things. Insulting the fans at every turn. Swearing he didn’t need half of them. You had Kathleen Kennedy castigating the fanbase for being Male, and declaring that we had had our time and now it was somebody elses turn. The Force is Female after all. So the Core fans. The $billion industry of guaranteed moviegoers that you all counted on, took your message to heart and stayed home. It wasn’t a movie they cared about. Being a cheesy badly cast prequel that had no potential to be good, and every potential to do brand and character damage. So they stayed home.
This isn’t a failure because Avengers, or Deadpool 2 (yeah getting beat by an R rated super hero comedy? Really guys? You’re Star Wars. If they beat you its because you screwed up.) This isn’t a failure of the fans. It’s a failure of management, or leadership, of production and messaging. You treated your guaranteed built in audience badly. Took them for granted. Accused them os sexism, racism, homophobia, called them ungrateful trolls. Spat on them daily via that oh so useful communications tool Twitter. Then wonder where they all went? So its on you guys. It’s on Kathleen, It’s on Rian, it’s on Jo Kasdan, it’s on all of you that could not behave in a professional manner on Social Media. Who could not treat the paying customers with respect. You got what you deserve. I hope its career ending for some of you. You earned it.