'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.

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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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.