'Solo' Will Lose $50+ Million In First Defeat For Disney's 'Star Wars' Empire (hollywoodreporter.com)

Zorro shares a report from The Hollywood Reporter: To borrow one of Han Solo's lines from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, "That's not how the Force works!" It's an apt way to sum up the troubled performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story. In one of the biggest box-office surprises in recent times, Solo is badly underperforming and will become the first of the Star Wars movies made by Disney and Lucasfilm to lose money. Wall Street analyst Barton Crockett says Solo will lose more than $50 million. Industry financing sources, however, say that figure could come in at $80 million or higher, although no one knows the exact terms of Disney's deals for home entertainment and television, among other ancillary revenues.

Comments

No it won't

[Plumpaquatsch]

In the long run it will make hundreds of millions in DVD sales and TV rights world wide. And that's not counting merchandise.

Re:No it won't

[The Cynical Critic]

The difference here is that it's projected to actually lose money, not just appear to lose money as far as the IRS is concerned. Actually losing money is something company executives will really take notice of, giving the IRS the wrong picture for the grave injustice of paying taxes.

Re:No it won't

[hazardPPP]

This was of course a movie made for streaming. It's almost the definition of not worth a movie theater trip.

I disagree. Actually, I think that "Solo" is by far the best of the Disney Star Wars movies. I think the problem is that The Last Jedi was the worst Star Wars movie ever (yes, worse than Episode I) and that pissed people off. They will watch Episode IX since they wan't to know how the story will end, but they won't bother with an "anthology" movie outside of the main storyline since they don't feel like they are missing anything important.

Re:No it won't

[walterbyrd]

According to the article you posted: The original trilogy did make a profit, they just hid it.

Solo may be a different matter.

I am noticing that the critics ratings is significantly higher than the audience score, on rottentomatoes. That happened with the last Star Wars movie as well.

Bottom line: Disney is killing the franchise. There is not a real princess in the movie, and everybody is sick to the back teeth of Disney's SJW crap.

There is no worthwhile story any more, and there hasn't been since the original trilogy.

It wasn't a terrible movie

[mykepredko]

I'm not really sure where the negative vibes came from; I thought it was better than "The Last Jedi" and a lot better than "Infinity Wars".

Ron Howard did a credible job as director (you can see what was done before him).

I think it really comes down to "Jedi Fatigue" and a really stupid release date (against "Infinity Wars" and "Deadpool 2").

Re:It wasn't a terrible movie

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I actually really liked it, in fact, I liked Rogue One a lot too and I'm beginning to think maybe the spin offs are going to be consistently better than the mainline.

As such, what bothers me is that the poor showing for Solo is because of the utter cluster fuck Rian Johnson made of the last film that was out in December. I sincerely hope they don't scrap the good films due to poor showings like this when the reason was the shit film that came out in December.

I suspect if this film had been out in December, and Rian's shitfest had been out now, they'd both have done well as Solo would've been much appreciated in December and would've led to people being excited for another release now (only to be disappointed because it'd still be Rian's shitfest).

The real problem here is the utter fuckup that is Rian Johnson ruining people's interest in December, not because Solo is a bad film in itself, on the contrary, it's quite good.

Solution: Take that trilogy you've promised to Rian Johnson back away from him and don't hire him ever again and focus on actual good directors. Don't give up on spin offs because the mainline ruined people's interest in the subsequent film when the real problem was the director doing a shit job of the mainline film.

Re:It wasn't a terrible movie

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the utter joke that was TLJ lost many fans. They used Star Wars as a platform for their gender studies bullshit, just to "stick it" to those terrible white male nerds. Not even Jar Jar could achieve what they did here. The franchise is dead.

Re:It wasn't a terrible movie

[Anonymous Coward]

But 90% of what made it awful is rather than focus on actually telling a story he was trying to make political points, with snipes at long term fans about how it's time to let a younger generation take over and such.

He can't be absolved of blame when he took a long running franchise and made it political, suddenly attacking key much loved characters and turning them into bumbling buffoons such as Skywalker, Poe, and so forth.

And if anything the story wasn't shit because there were too many things it didn't resolve, but that half the story revolved around watching spaceships flying through space doing nothing much at all until the end, where they realised they could've just used warp drive to suicide through the enemy ship, something they could've done well before hand with the ships that were running out of fuel anyway.

It was nothing to do with the film he was left to follow on from, and entirely just a bad film in itself. A boring, inconsistent, politicized piece of crap. That's on no one's shoulders but Rian's, and this much is obvious in the ratings - the worst rated Star Wars film of all time, because it is.

He's just the wrong sort of person for that sort of job, you see it even on his twitter feed where he's constantly attacking fans who criticise and claiming they're not true scotsmen... er, Star Wars fans. If someone is too arrogant to realise they fucked up and instead blame the customers, they have no right to be anywhere near the franchise ever again.

Fact is, Rian wasn't tried and tested, his most famous previous credit was to be a co-director on a single episode of Breaking Bad. They tried someone new, he was shit at the job, wasn't ready for something as big as Star Wars, and he failed, move on, never use him again, lesson learnt. Maybe one day after working on other smaller productions he'll be ready, but he isn't now, and he proved that with his catastrophic failure. Keep using him however, and Star Wars as a property is dead, as this downward trend with Solo will just be the start, which is a shame, because as Solo itself showed, there's still stories to tell and life left in the franchise if they'd just keep people like Rian away from it now that they know he's nowhere near competent (or mature) enough to do Star Wars.

Re:It wasn't a terrible movie

[AmiMoJo]

The Last Jedi really set up the final episode with the biggest and most necessary change in the Star Wars universe - the final admission that the Jedi were actually pretty terrible and that the true saviour, the one who will really bring balance to the Force and peace the universe, is not a Jedi.

In the original trilogy the Jedi were described as virtuous knights, fighting for good and protecting the innocent. Luke bought into it, he didn't know any better and his initial exposure to Jedi training was pretty positive. But in reality the Jedi not only failed in their most important mission to prevent the rise of the Sith, but they were actually pretty awful all round. They considered themselves superior and claimed ownership of the Force, used it to manipulate people without a second thought, and didn't seem to care at all about injustices like slavery. The latter arguably resulted in Anakin turning to the dark side and the deaths of billions.

Luke tried to emulate them but made the same mistakes, resulting in Kylo Ren. Then he meets Rey and sees that she doesn't fear the dark side, to her it's all just the Force and a part of her. Luke realizes that the Jedi order was the problem, as does Yoda, and that Rey and Kylo Ren are the future, free from all that baggage and liberated to do the right thing.

The new trilogy has so far mirrored the first one to an extent, but this is where it really diverges. Rey isn't descended from some great bloodline, Kylo Ren isn't a Sith. Ren killed his master not to save someone he cared about, for his own personal gain. The resolution won't be the return of the Jedi, it will be the end of the Jedi and something new taking their place and starting with Rey.

Re:It wasn't a terrible movie

[Brian Kendig]

Luke realizes that the Jedi order was the problem, as does Yoda, and that Rey and Kylo Ren are the future, free from all that baggage and liberated to do the right thing.

Yeah, because freeing someone from a moral framework and letting that person exercise his power as best he sees fit has worked so well in the Star Wars universe.

Re:It wasn't a terrible movie

[omfglearntoplay]

I liked the movie a lot... it's probably up there on my top four or five of all Star Wars movies, and I enjoyed most of them (much much less so the prequels). And the other two who went with me also enjoyed it a lot.

Things that they did better than TLJ:

1. It was FUN. It was a fun movie above everything else, despite having some nice grit and darkness to certain scenes. One of the writers is the guy who did The Empire Strikes Back and Indiana Jones. The other writer was his son.
2. They didn't piss all over a beloved character, or even a beloved item (saber).
3. They didn't overdo the humor, it was the perfect mix and tone.
4. You enjoyed ALL of the characters. The good guys, the bad guys, the random side characters, the alien monsters, the sidekicks, you name it. All of them were very enjoyable.
5. There weren't 10 political agendas overtly telling you how to think. There might have been one, but it was sort of funny... maybe... mostly weird probably, but I can certainly not get hung up on it.
6. The CGI was done in good taste 95% of the time, a rarity lately. Actually TLJ did OK there, too.

What was missing from Solo that was in other Star Wars movies?

1. Don't go in expecting a bunch of Jedi duels- this is about Han before he gets involved in that world.
2. It was less explosion/laser lights/flashy than some of the newer movies. This appealed to me, you need diversity in movies or they get stale.
3. They weren't saving the galaxy per se. But for me it was nice to focus in on a smaller crowd who were after a smaller prize.
4. ? I'm sure there are other things, but this is what stands out to me.

Anyway, I'm sad to see it not doing great [yet]. But I have a lot of faith that giving DVD sales and whatnot, it will be a huge money maker.

Re:It wasn't a terrible movie

[AmiMoJo]

Luke faced torture and certain death to save his father, who he barely knew, from the darkside. And here we have that same Luke about to murder his own nephew, whom he has known his entire life, in his sleep! For just starting to fall to the dark side.

The Jedi were afraid of the Dark Side, and painted it as a dichotomy between absolute good and absolute evil. That lead Luke to make that very bad decision out of fear.

Later he sees Rey not afraid of the dark side, but engaging with it and looking for answers to the questions she has about her parents in it. He could have done the same thing, but he realizes that Rey isn't evil and that the Jedi were wrong. Rey is fundamentally a good person and not so easily corrupted, able to handle the complex emotions of both sides of the Force.

Re:It wasn't a terrible movie

[Anonymous Coward]

You completely missed my main point, and simultaneously made my secondary point for me.

I understand why, according to this story, Luke made bad decisions. I am countering that, in that exact situation, Luke would not have made those decisions. They are contrary to his character, as revealed in the prior movies. When characters act grossly out of character like that, it makes the story feel arbitrary and dumb, which is exactly what happened here.

My secondary point was that each male failure in this movie had a female counterpart who was superior, and (in one way or another) called the male failure back to righteousness. Rey was Luke's superior-female counterpart, who is the courageous and self-sacrificing hero that Luke once was, and who motivates him (by example) to become again. That isn't a bad story in and of itself, but to tell it they had to ruin the original story of who Luke was, in a totally insulting way that doesn't make any sense.

Same for Poe, with Holdo as his superior female. And also Fin with Rose as his superior female. If it was just one telling of that tale I wouldn't cry "man-shaming," but the repetition of that theme for all of these heros is what makes the feminist politics ruin what could have been a good story. (Aside, the villains in the story were all men with no female counterpart).

Rogue-One, by contrast, was an absolutely awesome story about a baddass female hero who overcomes her past, shows tremendous courage and self-sacrifice, and achieves victory by doing so...all without any man-shaming of her male counterparts who are following her into the fight. If you want to lift women up, do it that way, without tearing men down.

Not Surprising

[quantaman]

Telling a completely new story in a great universe? Great idea.

Telling a derivative story in a great universe? Good idea.

Shooting a remake of a great movie? Decent idea.

Shooting a movie with an iconic character, defined by an iconic actor? Terrible idea.

The Star Trek remakes got away with it because the roles made the actors more than the actors made the roles (though they're still boring movies).

But Han Solo was cool because Harrison Ford is a top-end actor who absolutely nailed the character of Han Solo. A Han Solo movie without Harrison Ford is basically a movie of going "Boy, that character isn't nearly as interesting as I remember. And that guy still isn't Harrison Ford!"

It's not like there were a lack of stories to tell in the Star Wars universe.

Return of the Jedi?

[CanEHdian]

Didn't Darth Vader actor David Prowse tell us that Return of the Jedi also never made a profit?

So box office returns are below estimates. But we still have to go through the PPV, the DVD/BD disc releases, streaming service, TV, then there's all the merchandise/toys, etc. etc.

There are none so blind

[RandomFactor]

In his own note to investors, analyst Doug Creutz of Cowen & Co. pins the blame on a lackluster marketing campaign rather than franchise fatigue.

Marketing has little to nothing to do with it, but at least that's less stupid than the SW Fatigue shtick. Star Wars fans would have thrown money at the franchise forever without a second thought if they hadn't put social evangelists in charge and allowed them to burn it down.

Re:There are none so blind

[AmiMoJo]

Star Wars fans would have thrown money at the franchise forever without a second thought if they hadn't put social evangelists in charge and allowed them to burn it down.

Doubtful that had anything to do with it. Look at the list of top grossing films in the US we can see that number 3 is Black Panther, a film almost entirely made up of diversity hires where an SJW forces a bunch of conservatives to adopt his agenda and culminates in the creation of a reverse-racist outreach centre targeting poor black kids.

We also have Avatar, about an SJW enviro-mentalist who thinks a primitive native tribe is more important than unobtanium that could bring prosperity and wealth to several rich white guys. Force Awakens is up there, which as we know is the ultimate Mary-Sue anti-male crapfest. Even the Last Jedi is in at number 8, right above proper fan favourite manly man film The Dark Knight.

Worryingly, even femoid romantic crap like Titanic did really well. Even AmiMojo couldn't sit through that one. Somehow Wonder Woman, a feminist nightmare of a movie, did better than all the other DC universe stuff.

I know everything is SJWs' fault, but in this case maybe Solo is just a bad movie or people are fed up with Star Wars now.

Re:There are none so blind

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no problem with Wonder Woman. You're either painfully dense or trying to create an outrageous strawman (or, possibly, you've been completely brainwashed by mainstream propaganda which was legalized for domestic use about 5 years ago). Wonder Woman is a good character, a strong female heroine. Nothing was too forced there. Black Panther, well, we all should be offended at that as it's incredibly patronizing and racist. Those of us against this SJW crap aren't racist. Actually, we often view SJWs as patronizing racists. Us anti-SJWs believe that everyone should have an equal opportunity and compete (hard) on merit. That's best for everyone. We wouldn't think of giving handouts to minorities. That's been a failing strategy for decades, and it indicated a deep racism. Actions speak louder than words. No, the fact that a movie has strong female characters or strong black characters is no problem. It's a problem when you sacrifice the art to get something PC or pushing an agenda. It's like walking around with terrible breath. You have long since gotten used to it, but it's so painfully obvious to everyone else. This crap with twisting and mangling great franchises to make it PC is ruining art. Simple as that. Want to make a feminist movie? Go make one. But, don't destroy something else great in the process. Make a good movie with strong (and real, although this doesn't apply much to superhero movies) female characters and don't push and agenda, just write a good story. No one will object.

Re: The force

[Anonymous Coward]

Han Solo is not a Jedi so naturally the force is weak....just sayin

Re:Yawn ...

[supremebob]

Yeah... once you factor in BluRay sales, video service streaming fees, TV broadcast rights, and branded products (Toys, T-Shirts, etc) they'll still make a small fortune on this movie.

It's just going to take more time to become profitable than usual.

For specifics

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to youtube. There are quite literally hundreds if not thousands of videos that detailed what went wrong. For one thing, there was an active boycott of Solo (otherwise known as Soylo now among fans for the apparent reveal by the writer that Lando is a pansexual right before the release of the movie). This also probably killed the movie for countless red-state movie goers who were already incensed at the blatant SJW preaching that The Last Jedi seemed to do.

Really though, the stage was set for Solo's downfall with the poor movie (look at Rotten Tomato reviews) of The Last Jedi Returns. Sargon of Akkad has a video called "Gender Wars" that received a million views. How many of those did not buy a ticket to Solo? The Last Jedi is where the bridges were burned, and Solo is the consequence of that. Not that Solo is bad movie (though it has been described as mediocre at best).

It is clear that Kathleen Kennedy wanted to inject her politics heavily into The Last Jedi. In an interview she specifically said that she did not feel like she needed to cater to the fan base. The director Rian Johnson and writer John Kasden have been treating fans inhospitably in rather poor attempts to defend their story decisions.

Kathleen Kennedy made a Star Wars film that she and her fellow feminists wanted to see. Not what the traditional fan base was looking for (e.g. how the Luke Skywalker character was treated in The Last Jedi and the nonsensical Mary Sue aspects).

It appears there are not as many feminists interested in Star Wars as there was with the traditional demographic.

Its really all about scripts and actors

[drnb]

Shooting a movie with an iconic character, defined by an iconic actor? Terrible idea.

True Grit. Iconic character: Rooster Cogburn. Iconic actor: John Wayne in 1969. The 2010 remake had a good script and good actors. In particular Jeff Bridges as Cogburn. So like any other movie the script and the actors seem to be the key factors in success.

OK that's a remake not delving into an established character's past. Perhaps a more appropriate counterargument would involve a different Harrison Ford role, Indiana Jones. In Last Crusade we have River Phoenix playing a young Indiana Jones and revealing part of Jone's mysterious background. I thought those scenes worked well, again it may be all about the script and the actors. With a good script could River Phoenix have pulled off a respectable full length movie exploring Jone's youth? The Last Crusade scenes suggest that would be entire plausible.

Re:Go! Go! Go! SJWs!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I outline the case behind what happened in my "for specifics" post below. The fact is many fans were really put off by the SJW nonsense in The Last Jedi. A lot of the media and many liberals are in complete denial about this reality. But we are just really tired of heaping amounts of agenda being poured into films.

For a start, people can go to youtube and watch the "Gender Wars" video if they want to learn more about the soycott.

And Disney won't learn a thing

[elrous0]

Disney could view this as a moment to learn about franchise fatigue, how fans are getting sick of their injection of weird feminist politics into SW, how they need to focus on better writing and directing, etc.

Instead I guarantee you that Kathleen Kennedy will spin this as "People aren't interested in seeing movies with white male heroes anymore."

Re:Yawn ...

[Wycliffe]

gonna take a long time for 250 million+ loss

No worries, with current copyright laws, they have at least 95 years. And that's assuming Disney/Star Wars doesn't extend it again.
You have to appreciate the strange irony of calling a movie a failure if it's not profitable within a week of release yet having copyright laws that extend for many thousands of times longer than that.

We should change copyright laws to a max of 20 years or 5 years after profitability, whichever is shorter.

Re:Surprised

[jellomizer]

Star Wars and Star Trek need to stop.
It isn't that these new movies are bad or worse then before. But Star Wares and Star Trek were stories, characters and a fictional universe of a different era.

Prequels are especially tricky. Because we are applying our 40+ years of change of culture, and applying it to a story set 20+ years before the first movie.

The 2018 idea of the Rogue Anti-Hero is different then the 1978 Rogue Anti-Hero. Then trying to place this Anti-hero in a story before his first appearance. Just makes the feel of the story inconsistent.

These characters are fictional characters, made primary to entertain us. They do this by exaggerating traits that we expect to see. In Episode IV we didn't watch Han Solo deal with the contract and payment negotiation with Obewan. Or the days of just handing around shipping goods, playing chess with Chewy. As far as we see it. Han is always on the edge of disaster.

How to make good space movie

[AHuxley]

Know movie for fun.
Dont place SJW politics all over plot.
Trust in fans and what they liked to buy with past movies.
Dont add SJW emotions to movie that is to be fun for all.
Make sure script and speaking fits in with what fans expect given past history of movies.

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up.

Re:Surprised

[yuriklastalov]

In 50 years things that are common for us to do and say will probably be insulting too, while they may be doing things that will insult our current taboos.

I doubt it, on account of the fact that Progressives are going to end up crashing civilization against the rocks in the next decade or so. There's no way to predict social norms once we're freed from the church of Progress.

Up to now "Progress" has been pretty easy to predict: "If it's a social norm, destroy it." This can't continue forever. What happens when we exist in the perfect chaos desired by frothing at the mouth liberals?