Well, it’s finger pointing time. You don’t disappoint the way Solo: A Star Wars Story did over the Memorial Day weekend and not have people making excuses. In this case I think this excuse is close to being on the money. Disney exec Dave Hollis blames a crowded summer movie season, specifically having to contend with Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2. He tells THR…
“There’s a question of frequency, and how many times people will go to the movies. Is this too much and too soon for a third time in a five-week period?”
Yes, that is definitely a part of it. Anybody who says different is bullshitting. But it’s not like Disney couldn’t have foreseen this, especially since they were competing with themselves in the case of Infinity War. They could have taken steps to fix this, like maybe pushing Solo down further into the summer when it’s less stuffy.
But that is just one of many factors that played into it. Another is Solo‘s dismal showing overseas, especially in China where Star Wars has long had trouble gaining a foothold. The film only earned $65M internationally with just $10M of that from China. When you’re talking about a movie with a $300M budget, the domestic returns simply aren’t going to be enough.
“We have a lot of work to do in trying to understand this,” Hollis continued. “We are all over it and will spend a lot of time digging into why things happened the way they did in various markets. We have a year and a half before ‘Episode IX’ comes out.”
Yo, he’s all over it. And when Episode IX does gangbusters he’ll probably think the problem is solved. I’m of the mind that this disappointment is unique to Solo, and won’t have any effect on the core trilogy. While some are rejecting the “Star Wars fatigue” theory, I think it’s at least partially true. Unlike Marvel, which has been dropping two or three films a year for quite a while, Star Wars was always presented as a special event that arrives once in a blue moon. That feeling is gone, and Solo, which never presented itself as being an important cog in the machine, fell victim to people deciding to wait. Maybe they’ll see it this week with so little else coming out? We’ll find out when the numbers for week two hit.
