Solo: A Star Wars Story

[rteetz]

Definitely will be interesting to see how Disney reacts to this - I mean, they've still made a ton off Star Wars and the rest of their movie division is doing fine (other than Wrinkle in Time) so not like they need to over-react. Perhaps they just chock it up to "Memorial Day weekend was not a good time and we underestimated the impact of the competition and Infinity War being just 2 weeks before, etc." But we shall see. My guess is it doesn't change much as far as their plans for Episode IX but brings into question if they do a sequel to this one and/or if they want to keep doing backstory movies of older characters

Yeah I think timing was an issue with Solo. Competition from other films, and being too close to TLJ.

 

[jade1]

No excuses, people in charge blew it-for many reasons.

 

[BrianL]

Yeah I think timing was an issue with Solo. Competition from other films, and being too close to TLJ.

Timing was definitely the number one problem, and also the marketing wasn't convincing enough. There wasn't a lot of interest in this movie conceptually, so they really needed to sell it, and I guess they didn't. The trailers got me excited, but I don't think they won over the "not my Han Solo" crowd. Really, if the film hadn't run into the expensive reshoots, it probably would have been fine. Any movie with $250M plus was popular by most measures, but when that doesn't even cover the spend, then it is still a failure financially.

 

[rteetz]

No excuses, people in charge blew it-for many reasons.

I certainly agree there isn’t one reason this film wasn’t successful.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Timing was definitely the number one problem, and also the marketing wasn't convincing enough. There wasn't a lot of interest in this movie conceptually, so they really needed to sell it, and I guess they didn't. The trailers got me excited, but I don't think they won over the "not my Han Solo" crowd. Really, if the film hadn't run into the expensive reshoots, it probably would have been fine. Any movie with $250M plus was popular by most measures, but when that doesn't even cover the spend, then it is still a failure financially.

and I think the reports of the troubled production and the fact they had to bring in a new director also worried some people.

And obviously there are some people still turned off by The Last Jedi - I don't think that group alone would have result in that big of a hit to Solo, but coupled with all the other challenges it certainly didn't help

 

[DVCcurious]

As you all know I’ve been a boycotter hoping Solo would fail.

Solo is looking at $400-$450 which is a massive failure.

If the only thing affecting Solo was the boycott I was hopeful it would go from a $1 billion movie to an $800 million movie. In my wildest fantasy I was hoping for $650.

So I’m willing to admit that the boycott was not the primary reason for the failure. At best the boycott could’ve cut $200-250 out of the $1 billion. But what makes up the other $300 - 400 million shortfall?

If the boycotters all return is Star Wars going to be making $600 million films from now on? Is the general public that bored of Star Wars after 3 movies (3 did good, they are bored with the 4th)?

I would think “Solo” is more appealing to a general audience than “Boba Fett”

 

[TheMaxRebo]

As you all know I’ve been a boycotter hoping Solo would fail.

Solo is looking at $400-$450 which is a massive failure.

If the only thing affecting Solo was the boycott I was hopeful it would go from a $1 billion movie to an $800 million movie. In my wildest fantasy I was hoping for $650.

So I’m willing to admit that the boycott was not the primary reason for the failure. At best the boycott could’ve cut $200-250 out of the $1 billion. But what makes up the other $300 - 400 million shortfall?

If the boycotters all return is Star Wars going to be making $600 million films from now on? Is the general public that bored of Star Wars after 3 movies (3 did good, they are bored with the 4th)?

I would think “Solo” is more appealing to a general audience than “Boba Fett”

well, we've sort of hashed out what we *think* it was from:

- Memorial day weekend is not really a big weekend for movies to do well
- Competition, especially coming 2 weeks after Infinity War
- People not really that interested in a Solo back story
- The reported production issues with the movie leas people to have less confidence in the quality (which I think were proved false, but still impacted things)


So given the above even if it was the Last Jedi that has been pushed back to Memorial Day weekend (so prior to any badwill amongst a portion of the fandom) you still would have had items 1 and 2 to deal with and if there were production issues on top of that, I bet it would have not done nearly as well as it wound up doing. Now would it have done as poorly? Probably not, so you can chock some up to the backlash after TLJ and some people feeling 4 movies within 40 months (after having like 6 movies in 30 someodd years) was too much and people not really feeling we needed a Solo story / couldn't by anyone other than Harrison Ford playing Han

A bit hard to determine how much of the drop is from any one item

 

[Moliphino]

- Competition, especially coming 2 weeks after Infinity War

It came out 4 weeks after Infinity War (April 27). Still too close, and I don't understand why they didn't stick with December releases, but I don't know where the 2 week number came from?

 

[DVCcurious]

I don’t buy the competition excuse. Deadpool faced the same competition and it did great.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

It came out 4 weeks after Infinity War (April 27). Still too close, and I don't understand why they didn't stick with December releases, but I don't know where the 2 week number came from?

honestly not sure - so sorry for that. and Deadpool 2 was just the week before, right? So can't even use mixing them up as an excuse

Either way, just the fact there were other "big" movies around the same time that took up people's movie going $

gotta think their biggest question in hindsight is why not stick with December and just use that as Star Wars Month and go from there

 

[TheMaxRebo]

I don’t buy the competition excuse. Deadpool faced the same competition and it did great.

well, different audiences - but fair point.

No way it didn't negatively impact things though. I am lucky if I see 3 movies in the theater a year so going to two within 4 weeks is highly unusual for me, and I am sure I am not alone

 

[BrianL]

well, different audiences - but fair point.

No way it didn't negatively impact things though. I am lucky if I see 3 movies in the theater a year so going to two within 4 weeks is highly unusual for me, and I am sure I am not alone

This is correct. The majority of the actual movie-going public does not see that many movies. Those of us super-nerd fans go all the time, but most people go only a couple of times a year (and that's not counting the vast majority of people who do not go to movies at all). When you have big films like Avengers and Deadpool that close, one of them is going to take a hit. Deadpool 2 actually didn't perform that much better than Solo (though 3-day to 4-day weekend comparison) but it's budget was far lass than half of what Solo's was. DP2 under-performed the first one by a small bit, likely due to it's proximity to Infinity War (the first one was in the less competitive winter season). It still did well though and easily covered its budget.

To those boycotting, I will say this. Solo is the kind of Star Wars movie that you want if TLJ angered you. It would be better if it had done amazingly well as opposed to failing. The message now is that people don't want to see classic Star Wars characters and settings, but he Sequel Trilogy is still money in the bank.

 

[Kaleidodad]

Give Solo a more reasonable production cost and it ends up right in the same ballpark as Ant-Man, and then we're talking about it as a second-tier entry in a wildly successful ongoing franchise. So that tells me, clean up the production mess (compounded by several errors of marketing) and $400M+ is a nice day at the office.

But this overstated boycott talk is just fanboys having their cake and eating it too: wildly exagerrating the "expected" box office to $1B to take credit for $200M in losses? Hilarious.

 

[Liljo22]

I don’t buy the competition excuse. Deadpool faced the same competition and it did great.

By which standard? It is the first Marvel movie to open less than its predecessor and is probably going to be the first to make less overall since its trending way behind the original. I would say that IW had an affect on the numbers.

 

[sachilles]

You probably won't ever know for certain why.
However, you did have decent competition during the time period, where you have limited customers available. So you are trying to get a bigger market share of likely a smaller pot.
I really remember very little advertising to indicate this movie was coming out, far less than the marketing machine for the Last Jedi and the force awakens. Of course the marketing machine requires money, it's possible they didn't think they'd get the return.
Is it some sort of loss leader, that continues to keep the brand front and center of the fans that are in the periphery?
I do think it could have made more released at a different time. That being said, I think the hype machine is what really let it down. In general the buzz was minimal, and the die hard fan just wasn't bothered to go to the extremes to watch this.
I was out of country during it's opening weekend, and I saw nothing on social media to remind me I was missing it.

The shame is I think it's a good movie on it's own. No real fear of how it fits in, or how it might alter future movies. My expectations were much lower going in. Trying to put my thumb on it now, but I think part of the reason I liked it, is the "force" really has no real influence on the movie. It's familiar, but not the same old story.

 

[angelmav]

I generally have to use vacation time if I want to see a movie in the theater. TLJ was the last movie I did that for, and will be the last Star Wars movie I EVER do that for.

I think the general hatred among the hardcore for TLJ that would go to the theater 10-20 times and are sitting out Solo can't be ignored.

Which is exactly why KK, on the acquisition, stated they had to be good stewards to the universe and characters that had been created. Then promptly promptly dismissed the fanboys that had made this a billion dollar property to begin with.

Unfortunately, I don't think Disney will learn anything from this. They will use all the excuses contained herein, and convince themselves it was for a variety of other reasons.

The real test will be how well Ep9 does. I frankly don't see how they pull the core back. Force ghost Luke I guess,

 

[rteetz]

well, different audiences - but fair point.

No way it didn't negatively impact things though. I am lucky if I see 3 movies in the theater a year so going to two within 4 weeks is highly unusual for me, and I am sure I am not alone

This Summer is especially expensive for movie goers. I saw Infinity War twice and Solo once. I skipped Deadpool 2. Next you have Incredibles which I will likely see and then Ant-Man 2. I might skip Ant-Man 2 just to save on costs.

 

[sachilles]

This Summer is especially expensive for movie goers. I saw Infinity War twice and Solo once. I skipped Deadpool 2. Next you have Incredibles which I will likely see and then Ant-Man 2. I might skip Ant-Man 2 just to save on costs.

So.....what we learn from this is that magic bands are valued more to you than movies?

 

[rteetz]

So.....what we learn from this is that magic bands are valued more to you than movies?

I haven't bought a magicband in a while...

 

[BrianL]

I generally have to use vacation time if I want to see a movie in the theater. TLJ was the last movie I did that for, and will be the last Star Wars movie I EVER do that for.

I think the general hatred among the hardcore for TLJ that would go to the theater 10-20 times and are sitting out Solo can't be ignored.

Which is exactly why KK, on the acquisition, stated they had to be good stewards to the universe and characters that had been created. Then promptly promptly dismissed the fanboys that had made this a billion dollar property to begin with.

Unfortunately, I don't think Disney will learn anything from this. They will use all the excuses contained herein, and convince themselves it was for a variety of other reasons.

The real test will be how well Ep9 does. I frankly don't see how they pull the core back. Force ghost Luke I guess,

For the record, I'm as "hardcore" of a Star Wars fan as one can be, but I didn't have a problem with TLJ. You're painting with a broad brush there. Plus, when TLJ made tons of profit, and Solo did not, which movie will they look to as the successful template?