Solo: A Star Wars Story delivered a below expectations opening at the worldwide box office, bringing in $148,325,000 around the globe over the weekend. With estimates for North America alone being anything between $150 – $175 million, the film brought in a disappointing $83 million for the three day weekend. The rest of the globe – and the film opened practically everywhere on or around the 25th May – added just $65 million worldwide.
Undoubtedly a worrying figure, especially considering the price tag, which doesn’t include prints and marketing. Estimates now significantly dip to the film bringing in $525-575 million worldwide, half of 2016’s Rogue One, which was in turn half of The Force Awakens. After 4 films in 3 and a half years, the law of diminishing returns seems to have hit the franchise hard.
At the risk of casting a negative shadow over this excellent movie, questions have to be asked about the lacklustre marketing campaign, absence of public awareness and the logic of releasing a film that’s been under-marketed between Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2 and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Despite fantastic word of mouth within our fandom – the majority of us here at Fantha Tracks LOVE this film – the wider public simply aren’t aware of Solo, and the mixed response to The Last Jedi only 161 days before seemed to have hurt Solo‘s chances of being the monster hit it truly deserves to be.
Hindsight is a beautiful thing. Like many other long-time Star Wars fans I have a deep nostalgia for seeing the film come out in May, but during the saga’s 13 year absence from that month other franchises – most notably the Marvel Cinematic Universe – have claimed that spot. The month of May is not the home of Star Wars releases anymore. It should sit in the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, James Bond slot in December, where it has owned Christmas for the last 3 seasons. Why change a good thing?
Star Wars has been the big dog in the yard for decades, with other films scuttling out of its way for fear of being subsumed by the behemoth box office haul that the GFFA traditionally takes. Star Wars films ran in cinema’s for long weeks and months. Arriving at three year intervals, with 16 years between the first two trilogies and 10 years between the prequel and sequel trilogies, Star Wars was a major cultural event. Now, it’s one of many franchises arriving at increasingly regular intervals. It’s not unique any more.
In 2018, once a film has been in cinemas for 3 weeks, it generally hits the wall as other blockbusters take screens away from it, and there are plenty of mega franchises flinging sequels at the screens every month. The landscape has dramatically changed and we simply can’t assume a Star Wars film will automatically be a smash hit in 2018. For a stellar film like Solo, to be undersold in the way it appears to have been, that’s a crying shame.
Star Wars, under the ownership of an independant, George Lucas led Lucasfilm, was a very different beast to Lucasfilm as part of Disney. Lucas was the bottom line – if he wanted to push on a project and make it happen, no matter the cost, he could – it was his money. Disney have shareholders, general meetings, annual reports. Disney answers to those shareholders, and if a project isn’t making money, it’s canned and they move on to the next thing. These first weekend figures will be sending alarm bells ringing through the House of Mouse. With the rated R Deadpool bringing in $130 million the weekend before and Avengers: Infinity War opening with a monster $257,698,183 in the States and $640,521,291 worldwide in late April (currently it’s on $1,904,688,638 and about to pass The Force Awakens as the 3rd highest grossing film ever), a rethink is surely needed.
Star Wars, and specifically Solo: A Star Wars Story, deserves better than this. Share your love of this film, retweet Ron Howard, do the marketing job that Disney seem to have opted not to do and get the word out – A Star Wars film hasn’t needed word of mouth like this since 1977, so let the world know how much fun this film is.
