Last weekend saw Solo: A Star Wars Story underperform at the box office to the tune of $84 million before crossing over the $100 million mark on Memorial Day. Almost any other franchise would kill for those numbers, but this is Star Wars. Everyone holds it to a much higher standard. Solo had by far the lowest opening for any Star Wars film since Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012. Considering Solo‘s extensive reshoots made it the most expensive movie in the franchise, this was definitely a disappointment for Lucasfilm and its parent studio. Today’s Nerdist News is examining Disney’s path forward now that Solo has changed the game.
Join host and droids rights activist, Jessica Chobot, as she lays out the options for Star Wars. Solo was the first time that a Star Wars movie was released within six months of the previous film. The Last Jedi also proved to be more divisive than the studio intended. Whether there was audience fatigue or a backlash, putting out the two films so closely together appears to have been a mistake.
It also appears that Lucasfilm won’t be able to simply replicate the Marvel Studios approach of bringing out multiple Star Wars movies within a single year. That frequency does make the new installments less special, but Marvel has also done a very good job of mixing up the tone and genre of its superhero flicks. Solo isn’t radically different from the previous movies, and Lucasfilm may have played it too safe to make it stand on its own.
Despite the relatively poor reception of Solo, this is far from the end for Star Wars. It’s bigger than any single movie. However, Disney and Lucasfilm will probably regroup and rethink their strategy. Releasing the films at the end of the year helped make the previous three Star Wars movies into events, and there’s over a year until Star Wars Episode IX arrives in theaters. That should be more than enough time to right the ship.
Why do you think Solo failed to fly higher at the box office? Share your theories below!
Images: Lucasfilm
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