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

Posted by BeauHD on from the just-wait-for-the-Boba-Fett-movie dept.

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.

14 of 579 comments (clear)

  1. It wasn't a terrible movie by mykepredko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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").

    --
    Mimetics Inc. Twitter
    1. Re:It wasn't a terrible movie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:It wasn't a terrible movie by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I wouldn't place the blame squarely on Rian Johnson's shoulders. Part of the issue is that J.J. Abrams was given the first film and he's never been able to write a story from start to finish which you really need to do if you're making a trilogy. Look at something like Babylon 5 where J. Michael Straczynski had the overall story arc planned out in advance and was able to create something much more narratively satisfying because there was a point and purpose behind the different characters and events that occurred earlier in the series.

      For Star Wars, there were no character arcs planned and in usual J.J. Abrams fashion he introduced plenty of unresolved and mysterious plot threads that he had no solid plans for resolving while essentially remaking Episode IV. Maybe that works great for something like Lost where you can jerk the audience around for 6 seasons, but for a Star Wars trilogy you need to know where the story is headed.

      I suppose you could pass the buck to Disney who could have done a much better job of managing the Star Wars property. Why they didn't have an overall script or plan in place is beyond me. If you look at the Marvel cinematic universe they seem to have that much more planned out and I think that's why it's doing so well.

    3. Re:It wasn't a terrible movie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, it seems that Abrams had an outline for Ep. VIII written but Rian decided to completely ignore it and write his own story.

    4. Re:It wasn't a terrible movie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If that was the goal, they did it wrong.

      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.

      Character motivation MATTERS when telling a good story. There interest here wasn't to show us how characters react in this drama, it was to take a widely-loved hero and turn him into a coward that just shrugs his shoulders and abandons his friends and family during their time of greatest need!

      So, it makes zero sense that Luke would behave this way, so the story is dumb. And it doesn't stop there. Poe, formerly an elite and devoted hero of the resistance, is now a mutineer that just wants to blow everything up, and is directly responsible for getting the entire resistance wiped out. Fin is selfish and obsessed.

      All our male heroes are having their characters destroyed, so their female counterparts can show their superiority, in each case. As if the bad plot wasn't bad enough, being beaten over the head with this man-shaming is just icing on the cake.

      Fuck star wars.

    5. Re:It wasn't a terrible movie by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Infinity wars was down a few million a day. It did not explain Solo theaters with 22 tickets sold.

      Solo suffered from the pansexual comment. Audience demographics showed families attendance was down 80%. What parent wants to discuss pansexuality with their 12 year old. Awkward. yea... I know... it really wasn't in the movie.. it was a forced error on the part of the writer who gave a bad off the cuff response to a question.

      Solo suffered from fan anger over TLJ. There's no way around it. Many of the peple the angriest were the ones who typically see films opening night and then repeatedly afterwards. I've seen A:IW 5 times and Deadpool II, 3 times. (BTW: I'm hearing good things about "Upgrade" a little independent Sci Fi film and I'm going to see it before it vanishes from theaters).

      I was angry because TLJ humiliated and ruined Jake Skywalker (as Mark Hamill called him). And generally because the film humiliated males (Poe, Hux, Kylo, even Snoke) without any corresponding humiliation scenes for females.

      TLJ was independently a really dumb film that repeatedly broke my suspension of disbelief so often that I had none left for the last half hour. I was just debating.. "do I leave and wait in the lobby or do I just sit out the last bit to see how this shit show ends?". And I went into TLJ in a very positive mood. It had a lot of my good will and had burned it all by the 45 minute mark. By the time I walked out, I'd decided not to see or buy any star wars material based on TLJ canon.

      So.. I'm going to Avengers and the Solo trailer came up (1st trailer) and I literally felt sick at my stomach from leftover anger at TLJ.

      EU is my canon. To say it's not canon is like Disney buy the rights to shakespeare and saying Hamlet is no longer canon. It was canon for 40 years. Some dumb soulless corporation isn't going to tell me what canon is.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  2. Not Surprising by quantaman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I stole this Sig
  3. Re:No it won't by Pseudonym · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nonsense! Solo will never be profitable because neither were most of the original trilogy.

    --
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  4. Re:Yawn ... by supremebob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. By my estimation by JudeanPeople'sFront · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The costs:
    Initial production budget was 250 mil. The movie was 80% done when the directors were fired and the new one re-shot most of the movie. So I'm adding 150 mil. The promotional budget for these movies is about the same as the production, so another 250 mil. Totaling 650 mil.

    The revenue:
    264 mil so far, not likely to go up by much. The second week's drop was quite heavy, so I expect 300 mil in total. Of which Disney's share is anyone's guess. Roughly half, 150 mil. Pathetic. Toy sales, TV rights, DVDs? Can't be much, judging by what The Last Jedi did. It basically broke Toys'R'Us! No one but ultra-geeks and collectors were exited about those toys. The regular fans, the general public, kids... are either "Meh" about it or actively hate Disney's Star Wars. The Last Jedi killed the golden goose.

    The big picture:
    Disney paid cool 4 billion for the franchise. A completely safe long-term investment in index funds will bring 5-10% annually. Therefore, Star Wars needs to bring 600 million to 1 billion every year to be on par. Disney needs The Force Awakens kind of film every year. So far, the investment has been a colossal failure. Disney can eat the loss because of the Marvel movies, theme parks, etc, but Star Wars will be a case study in failure for years to come.

  6. Re:There are none so blind by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  7. Re:The Harrison Ford factor by An+Ominous+Cow+Erred · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's not really true. It is *TOTALLY* doable. In fact, the prequels (as badly-written as they were) provide a perfect counterargument.

    Ewan McGregor seemed like he was channeling the deceased spirit of Sir Alec Guinness. He *was* Obi-wan. I'm amazed at how good his delivery was given the crap direction that Lucas provided (as seen how otherwise awesome actors like Natalie Portman were rendered like, well, petrified statues with hot grits).

    If they'd searched long and hard enough they certainly could have found someone who could *be* Han Solo.

    At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, Alec Guinness himself made a pretty good Hitler, and Bruno Ganz was flat out iconic. Nobody complains that they're not as good at being Hitler as the real Hitler.

  8. Re:Yawn ... by Wycliffe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. Re:No it won't by hazardPPP · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.