Solo: A Star Wars Story

[direwolf]

It might be tough for this movie to have a big weekend with Deadpool 2 cutting into its profits. I'm kinda surprised that Disney/Lucasfilm opened their movie so close to it.

Compare that to Rogue One's opening, where their only competition at the time was Moana, which had already been out for a month. (according to Box Office Mojo)

[Strange Brew]

Box Office mojo predicted $134 million for the four day weekend, and that is before the Thursday previews cam in, which beat the record for the Memorial Day weekend.

I do think we'll see quite a drop from Rogue One, but this will do minimum of $125 million for the long weekend.

[Nadal Fan]

Everyone I've talked to seems to have said the movie was good, I wonder if it's a case of lower expectations? I liked this movie more than Last Jedi (I liked TLJ as well), I wonder if this causes Disney to change there Star Wars approach and make it less a connected universe and go back to just anthology films. One thing that I was confused with for this movie was

Spoiler!

Is Darth Maul still alive or does this take place before Episode 1?

[direwolf]

Originally Posted by Nadal Fan

Everyone I've talked to seems to have said the movie was good, I wonder if it's a case of lower expectations? I liked this movie more than Last Jedi (I liked TLJ as well), I wonder if this causes Disney to change there Star Wars approach and make it less a connected universe and go back to just anthology films. One thing that I was confused with for this movie was

Spoiler!

Is Darth Maul still alive or does this take place before Episode 1?

I think the fact that these anthology films are stand-alone stories is the biggest factor. The filmmakers can go off and do their own thing within the universe without having to cater too much to 30+ years of back story, so the nerd rage would be minimal.

Lowered expectations probably helped as well. Last Jedi was a very polarizing film (for the record, I really enjoyed it). I've seen lots of comments online and on youtube lately of people attempting to boycott Disney and Lucasfilm, etc.. So I think a lot of hardcore SW fans probably went into this film expecting to hate it, but so far I'm not seeing the same kind of vitriol that TLJ produced. This film seems to have pleased just about everyone so far, which is extremely rare for a Star Wars film.

And to answer your spoiler question:

Spoiler!

This movie apparently takes place about 20 years after the Phantom Menace, so Darth Maul obviously survived his fight with Obi-Wan. If you look closely, it looked like he may have had robotic legs, a-la Vader.

[Codes]

I liked it a lot more than I thought I was going to. Definitely some unexpected events, but some really nice tie ins with the broader Star Wars story.

[RyZ]

Currently tracking for 80-90 on the standard 3 day weekend and 105-115 for the holiday 4 day weekend. It wont be a top 5 premier of 2018 and may not even place in the top 10. A 90M 3 day standard weekend premier would have placed 9th in 2017).

[Bunk]

That was really good!

I was super disappointed, even angry about The Last Jedi, but this one exceeded expectations.

[Oil Stain]

I've seen the movie described as a space western a couple of times, and I think that fits the movie very well.

It wasn't a movie heavily focused on good vs evil as all other Star Wars films. There were lots of grey areas, and people just doing what they thought they needed to do to survive.

I thought they did a pretty good job hitting on most of the key points of Han Solo's backstory. I mean the movie was pretty constrained in where it could go as we all know the rest of the Han Solo story already, and I think they did a good job staying true to the Han Solo character while adding some new flavor to his story.

I thought it picked up steam as the movie went along and continued to get more entertaining through to the climax.

[Buff]

I loved it. I was in a bad mood and it brought me right out of it. The people in the row behind us were the loudest talkers I've ever heard and they kept kicking my chair up until the previews. I found myself looking for reasons to hate the movie and I didn't find any. It was a fun movie and well done. The actors chosen did a great job portraying Han and Lando.

[blankall]

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/...hologyfilm.htm

Numbers are in....35 million including 14 million in Thursday previews. Not looking good. Those numbers project to about 110 million for the weekend. The long weekend is a bit unpredictable, as more families go to movies, but this movie could be front loaded due to the fact it's Star Wars.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

I wouldn't read too much into the box office being an indication of Star Wars fatigue or issues for the franchise. I think it probably has to do with poor timing on the release. We just had Avengers and Deadpool come out. DP2 is still gonna make $50m this weekend and $20m for Infinity War.

There's only so many entertainment dollars to go around. You can't have a tentpole come out every weekend or every second weekend and expect them all to break records. Eventually people will choose to skip one of them. Unfortunately being the 3rd major release in the last month, Solo is feeling that.

Episode IX isn't coming out until Dec 2019. Solo should have been their holiday 2018 movie.

The only bonus for this movie is that there isn't another big release until the Incredibles 2 on June 18th (I'm not counting Oceans 8 because it isn't really a tentpole) so it should dominate the box office until then. After that though, it is basically one big budget movie every 2 weeks (or less) for the rest of summer. Jurassic World 2 June 22, Ant Man 2 July 6, The Rock's 15th movie in the last year July 13th, Mission Impossible July 27th.

[Strange Brew]

^ Diagree with you Cecil. I think they are overplaying nostalgia (the trailers playing on the “I have a good feeling about this” line) and teens aren’t clamoring for this movie. A lot of that granted comes from exposure to my kids and their friends who have little interest in this. This movie and Last Jedi will be down signifiacntly from Rogue One and Force Awakens.

Still big box office draws but enough with the nostalgia and back stories maybe. Now they are talking about a Boba Fett movie?

[Cecil Terwilliger]

But that's exactly what I'm saying. This has nothing to do with star wars fatigue. It's just poor marketing.

Rogue One was super successful and was a fanservice type movie and no one was worried if the "teen" market was interested. No reason why this movie shouldn't have put up similar numbers.

This film didn't generate enough buzz to beat IW or DP2 and frankly I'm not surprised. But I don't think that's a knock to the SW franchise, it is healthy as ever, I think it is a sign that Marvel and their heroes have made gains in the public in terms of popularity.

This movie has/had a market and I think at xmas season it kills at the box office. But they released it during an oversaturation period of tentpoles and against movies that not only beat them to release but shares the same target market (generally since DP2 is not kid friendly. Except maybe Sliver's kids). This movie got cannibalized by superheroes. Not other Star Wars movies.

[zamler]

If this movie flops it will be because it is not very good, which is becoming a thing with SW films. Black Panther beat TLJ at the box office because BP is a better movie.

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

But that's exactly what I'm saying. This has nothing to do with star wars fatigue. It's just poor marketing.

Rogue One was super successful and was a fanservice type movie and no one was worried if the "teen" market was interested. No reason why this movie shouldn't have put up similar numbers.

This film didn't generate enough buzz to beat IW or DP2 and frankly I'm not surprised. But I don't think that's a knock to the SW franchise, it is healthy as ever, I think it is a sign that Marvel and their heroes have made gains in the public in terms of popularity.

This movie has/had a market and I think at xmas season it kills at the box office. But they released it during an oversaturation period of tentpoles and against movies that not only beat them to release but shares the same target market (generally since DP2 is not kid friendly. Except maybe Sliver's kids). This movie got cannibalized by superheroes. Not other Star Wars movies.

No I’m not blaming the marketing. The SW franchise is not resonating to the extent possible with younger viewers IMOand nothing to do with Deadpool and Avengers being out.

As has been said, big reason is the quality of the movies. All Star Wars movies to date have been backstories and telling same story over again. How can that not catch up with you eventually? I’m not calling them bad movies or flops, just narrowing their appeal.

A Boba Fett movie? Seriously? That’s not attracting a new audience.

[photon]

I enjoyed it, was better than I was expecting.

[MoneyGuy]

Saw it this morning. I really liked it.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by zamler

If this movie flops it will be because it is not very good, which is becoming a thing with SW films. Black Panther beat TLJ at the box office because BP is a better movie.

Black Panther beat the last Jedi because it was the first black title superhero character in the MCU. If you look at the typical domestic to Foreign ratio of Marvel movies and compare it to Black Panther you see that Black Panther over performed domestically. The cultural most on the US market drove it to where it is. It will outdraw Infinity War domestically.

Solo is a good movie, its not an epic space opera but instead a great popcorn summer movie. It doesn't need Han, Chewie and Lando to stand on its own. I think it may have been a better movie without them

Movie spoiler

Spoiler!

The way it ended with Darth Maul sets up some interesting things that you can do with the universe.

If you got rid of Han and Chewie you could have had the ending be that they join the start of the rebellion. With this movie you knew it had to end with Han, Chewie and the Falcon together

If this one bombs it will do so on lack of hype as no one really wanted a Han origin story.

[icarus]

My wife worked on this film, so I got to go see it on Tuesday for the ILM/Lucasfilm crew screening. I thought it was great, I really enjoyed it as I think they got the balance right between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Although the highlight for me was seeing her name rolling up the credits in the inimitable blue font against a starry background! Being a Star Wars nerd, I thought that was so cool.

[MRCboicgy]

I loved that movie. I do not get the hate.


It was gritty, it was rough around the edges, you see what kinda made Han the salty guy he was when he was older.


There was no saving the universe, just small scale adventure.