Box Office: 'Solo: A Star Wars Story' Disappoints With Mere $36M Friday
'Solo: A Star Wars Story'
On its face, a $71 million Fri-Sun figure was a terrific number for an opening weekend. But coming off
Shrek the Third which opened with $121m that same pre-Memorial Day weekend in 2007, the 58%-smaller launch of
Shrek Forever After came off as something of a bust. And since the previous
Shrek movie wasn’t terribly leggy ($322m from a $121m debut), there was a reason to fear the worst and wonder if this
Shrek movie would even crack $200m domestic. But then
Shrek Forever After, buoyed by a weak June slate (where the movies were so bad that
The Karate Kid felt like an Oscar contender) and the still-strong 3D advantage, legged it out to $238m domestic and eventually earned $752m worldwide on a $165m budget.
Ditto
Star Trek into Darkness which opened to $83 million over its Thurs-Sun debut compared to the $79m Fri-Sun launch of
Star Trek. The Kirk v Khan sci-fi sequel legged it out to $228m domestic in the summer of 2013, not far off from the 2009
Star Trek’s $256m domestic cume. Yes, it was in 3D this time and it earned a still-not-super $467m worldwide on a $190m budget, but the story wasn’t done after its slightly underwhelming opening weekend. Even
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace dealt with a week of "Why did it only make $105m in five days?" chatter before it soared past the $200m mark in a then-record 13 days back in 1999.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, there are enough cases of a film opening a bit below expectations only to recover after its opening weekend and make good on its initial promise. It's somewhat rare, especially in this frontloaded and Netflix-and-Chill era, but it does happen from time
(Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) to time (
Batman Begins). All of this brings us to
Solo: A Star Wars Story. At a glance, a $35.6 million opening day is flat-out terrible for the first day of a new
Star Wars movie. It's lower than the Thursday figures for
Force Awakens ($57m) and
Last Jedi ($45m) and just above the $29m Thursday previews for
Rogue One in 2016.
If the
Star Wars prequel/origin story plays like a "normal" Memorial Day release, then the initial Friday numbers are pretty awful. Memorial Day weekend releases tend to do around 3x their Friday number and then earn around 2-2.25x their four-day debut figures. So, if
Solo plays like a "normal" Memorial Day release, we're looking at a $111m Fri-Mon debut and a domestic total of around $221-$250m. So, yes, considering the additional expenses incurred by the reshoots and the likely lack of overseas rescue that would make a $250m domestic gross a mere stepping stone to a $700m+ global cume, the odds are pretty grim for this
Star Wars story.
The much-discussed and much-dissected Han Solo origin story movie opened yesterday with $35.6 million on its first day of release. That includes a $14m Thursday, which is a record for a Memorial Day preview gross.
Solo earned 39% of its opening day figures before the day actually began, which is lower than the over/under 41% earned via Thursday previews of Disney’s first three
Star Wars movies. Five years ago, we all discussed the $38m opening day of
Fast and Furious 6 over Memorial Day weekend 2013 as if it were an unqualified mega-hit. And indeed it was. But if
Solo performs like
Furious 6 ($97m Fri-Sun/$117m Fri-Mon/$238m domestic total), will it be a disappointment or an outright disaster?
Well, reshoots and a director swap sent the budget soaring, Memorial Day weekend releases are often lucky to get even 2.5x the holiday opening and overseas figures aren’t necessarily making up the difference.
Fast and Furious 6 (and the various
X-Men and
Pirates sequels) earned large chunks of their cash overseas, while
Star Wars has always been a domestic-concentrated franchise. So if it “bombs” in North America, Disney and friends can’t count on foreign box office to save its butt. How exactly will we look at a
Star Wars movie, even one that wasn't a “main event” attraction, that potentially makes less worldwide than
Justice League ($657 million),
Logan ($619m) or
Ready Player One ($580m)?
The film may “recover” over the family-friendly weekend to the for a 2.9x multiplier (
The Day After Tomorrow) and a $104 million Fri-Sun/$124m Fri-Mon haul. It could leg like
Bruce Almighty,
Pearl Harbor and
The Lost World for an over/under $145m four-day opening. But being realistic, if it performs like an
X-Men sequel,
At World’s End or
Fast and Furious 6, we’re looking at a $90-95m Fri-Sun/$105-$115m Fri-Mon debut weekend. Legs like
Dead Men Tell No Tales at least gets it to $120m for the holiday. To be fair, if it legs it to $120m for the weekend and then legs it like
Men in Black 3 (2.5x) to $320m domestic, this becomes a different conversation.
The idea of a young Han Solo movie was always both not-terribly exciting to fans and counterintuitive to the promise of Walt Disney making new
Star Wars movies and especially stand-alone
Star Wars spin-offs. The idea was for new/interesting directors to play in the
Star Wars sandbox, not for an elder statesmen director like (all due respect) Ron Howard to direct a Han Solo prequel flick. Fair or not, the firing of Phil Lord and Chris Miller dampened much of what enthusiasm remained for this cynical/irrelevant project. Even though it’s a pretty good movie, the reviews were merely okay and it wasn’t an event. It was surrounded by genuine event movies, including a Disney giant (
Avengers: Infinity War and
Incredibles 2) on each side.
In a skewed way, the $1 billion+ success of
Rogue One (and the $2b+ success of
The Force Awakens) may have created both unrealistic expectations and the need to somewhat formalize the new wave of
Star Wars movies. Had
Rogue One made $600-$800 million, it would have set the tone for a franchise where the “episodes” score sky-high box office while the
Star Wars Story movies are less-conventional/more offbeat movies that aren’t expected to rule the world. Absent its sadly timely politics that made it “the movie we need right now,”
Rogue One might have done just that. But going from three $1 billion+ grossers to an installment that may struggle to hit $600m is a horrible look.
That a vocal minority skewed the narrative of the well-reviewed and mostly well-received
The Last Jedi so that its $1.33 billion gross was viewed as a failure didn’t help. Nor did the online narrative around Rian Johnson’s sequel being that it disappointed fans by being too different/bold/unconventional or too “politically correct.” That was frustrating both to those who really liked
Last Jedi and to those who didn’t like it for subjectively valid reasons entirely unrelated to the gender parity and racial makeup of its cast. Now what should have been either a victory lap after three-straight $1b+ grossers or an acceptable mulligan is going to only add to the “Egad,
Star Wars is doomed” drumbeat.
Fox moving
Deadpool 2 one week prior to
Solo (as opposed to one week after) may have hurt. Wade Wilson is an unapologetic version of the kamikaze/devil-may-care anti-hero while young Han Solo was the “safe for all audiences” version. Think if Hollywood released a
James Bond Jr. movie just one week after a new
James Bond flick. If this goes bad, like a domestic total just over/under the $248 million opening weekend of
The Force Awakens, that doesn’t mean
Star Wars is doomed. It does mean that, in a world where
Star Wars isn’t the only mega-bucks movie event franchise, just slapping “Star Wars” on an otherwise generic space adventure movie/origin story isn’t going to cut it.
Disney is drowning in MCU money and is about to get more from Pixar. If a bunch of huge franchises can’t compensate for an occasional foul ball, what’s the point of having a bunch of big franchises?
Star Wars IX will still be big, and at worst Lucasfilm can release one “big”
Star Wars movie every two-to-three years. When lifelong
Star Wars fans ruefully admit that they just aren’t psyched to see the newest
Star Wars movie, especially one that cost as much as $300 million thanks to reshoots (shades of
Justice League), maybe these “young original trilogy character” prequels aren’t the way to go. They never were, but now we might (pending post-debut legs) have proof.
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Box Office: ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ Headed for Underwhelming Holiday Weekend Debut
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” is struggling to make the kind of opening weekend impact now expected from a Star Wars film, with an estimated $114 million from 4,381 domestic sites over the four-day Memorial Day weekend. Earlier estimates had pegged the film in the $130-$150 million range.
“Solo” earned about $35.6 million through Friday, including $14.1 million from Thursday grosses, the highest Thursday for a Memorial Day opener. But a $114 million opening would have “Solo” trailing the three-day debut of the last anthology film, “Rogue One,” by $41 million — to say nothing of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s” $220 million opening.
The Disney-Lucasfilm venture is the 10th Star Wars movie and fourth from Disney in less than four years. Should the holiday estimate hold for “
Solo: A Star Wars Story,” it will raise questions about franchise fatigue and Disney’s strategy of opening the tentpole a mere five months after “The Last Jedi” debuted on Dec. 16.
At $114 million, “Solo” would be the fifth-biggest film to open on Memorial Day weekend. Disney’s 2007 release “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” currently holds that title with $139.8 million, followed by “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull,” “X-Men: The Last Stand,” and “Fast and Furious 6,” with $117 million.
“Solo” follows Alden Ehrenreich as a young Han Solo, who befriends his future co-pilot Chewbacca and meets the gambler Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover). Emilia Clarke, Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton, Paul Bettany, Joonas Suotamo, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge round out the cast. Ron Howard directed from a
screenplay by Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan. Howard replaced the directing team of Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who left the project in June, citing “creative differences.”
Critics have been mostly positive about the film, which holds a current 71% “fresh” score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Fox’s “
Deadpool 2” will likely nab the second place slot in its sophomore weekend with $54.5 million from 4,349 theaters. The addition should give the “Deadpool” sequel an 11-day total of around $220 million. Starring Ryan Reynolds, “
Deadpool 2” sees the titular antihero forming the X-Force in an effort to save a young mutant from Josh Brolin’s Cable.
Third place is slated to go to “Avengers: Infinity War” in its fifth frame, with $21 million from 3,768 locations. “Infinity War” has earned $1.8 billion worldwide in its first 28 days, with $605 million from domestic grosses. This weekend’s take should push “Infinity War’s” domestic total past “Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s” $620 million and “The Avengers'” $623 million to land the No. 6 slot on the all time domestic earners list.
The second weekend of Paramount’s “Book Club” should land in fourth with $12 million from 2,810 theaters. The Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen, Candace Bergen, and Diane Keaton-starrer has earned $22 million in its first week at multiplexes. The four women star as book club participants who decide to shake up their lives after reading “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Warner Bros.’ “Life of the Party” is likely to land the fifth place title in its third frame, with about $6 million from 2,937 sites. Melissa McCarthy stars in the Mother Day’s opener, which has earned $33 million domestically in its first two weeks. She plays a recently divorced mom who goes back to school at her daughter’s college.
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