After the huge success of Avengers: Infinity War at last week’s box office, we have some of the first indications of the possible box office take that we could expect from Solo: A Star Wars Story in its opening days as predicted by Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter. Scott Mendelson, writing at Forbes.com, sums up the situation….
The first bit of official pre-release tracking is out for Solo: A Star Wars Story. Let me throw in the all-important caveats that A) tracking guestimates are not an exact science and B) the opening weekend can trend up or down based on one variable over another over the next three weeks. With that said, we may be looking at a $160-$170 million Fri-Mon Memorial Day weekend. That would be the second-biggest Memorial Day weekend launch, sans inflation or 3D bumps. That would be a record launch, ahead of the $153 million Fri-Mon debut (counting Thursday previews) of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End back in 2007.
If you want to adjust for inflation, a $160 million+ Fri-Mon launch would be the fifth-biggest Memorial Day weekend debut behind Pirates 3 ($156m in 2007/$204m adjusted), The Lost World ($92m in 1997/$180m adjusted), X-Men: The Last Stand ($122m in 2006/$172m adjusted) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($125m in 2006/$162m adjusted). Solo: A Star Wars Story is unique in the Star Wars franchise. It is not automatically expected to rule the summer, and it’s something of a wildcard in terms of if it will be well-received by critics and audiences and how it will stack up against the other seasonal biggies.
A new live-action Star Wars movie has been presumed to be the seasonal box office champion since The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. That didn’t always happen. Attack of the Clones was topped in North America by Spider-Man and by Spider-Man, The Two Towers and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone worldwide in 2002. Rogue One was bested worldwide by Captain America: Civil War in 2016. But those runner-up rankings constituted a surprise.
The Alden Ehrenreich/Donald Glover/Emilia Clarke/Woody Harrelson/Thandie Newton “young Han Solo” prequel finds itself as just another big summer tentpole, relegated to a secondary status even by its own studio compared to Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War and (arguably) Pixar’s The Incredibles 2. To be fair, it will presumably end up playing the same sandbox as Infinity War, Incredibles 2, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and (potentially) Deadpool 2. Yet, both due to the “inessential” nature of this Star Wars Story and the heavyweight nature of its competition, the Ron Howard-directed space western may be a test for the Lucasfilm brand.
How much is the Star Wars name worth when that’s the only thing being offered? Save for the branding, this flick may play like a Batman Begins-ish prequel where a famed character is given a superhero-ish origin story which explains how he or she came to be the character we know and love. Sometimes you get Casino Royale, and sometimes you get Pan.
The fear is that this movie will come off like one of the many “make an IP into a superhero-ish franchise” attempts that have resulted in movies like King Arthur and the Legend of the Sword and The Mummy that make actual comic book superhero movies look better by comparison. The hope, and it’s screening pretty early so I’m presuming the best, is that it is both a quirky heist caper filled with inventive outer-space action and personable rogues and a valuable contribution to the Star Wars mythos. I’m not expecting Star Wars: The Last Jedi, merely an above-average episode of Star Wars: Rebels.
In approximately 181 hours, we’ll have a halfway decent idea of how the movie plays via the social media response to the first big screening [in LA on May 10th]. The review embargo will drop right after it screens at Cannes a few days later [May 15th], and then we’ll see to what extent the social and critical response affects the tracking. Of course, if Avengers: Infinity War is still killing it worldwide, then Solo won’t be as big of a priority. And that’s another way in which Solo: A Star Wars Story will be different from all other live-action Star Wars movies. It’s also the first Star Wars movie that can arguably afford to fail.
Time will tell — only 21 days before the film opens in the UK, and 22 for the US.
