Solo Han Solo Movie Box office Thread

[Shadow Moses]

Perhaps TLJ was Disney's BVS.

I'm sure Disney will sort themselves out quicker than WB.

 

[Silver Surfer]

Solo's domestic tracking dropped again this week, it has so every single week. 3 day projection is 100 – 125 million OW, BOT crunchers are saying even that might be optimistic. The Star Wars brand has taken a tremendous beating post TLJ, and the results are validating that.

 

[jmc]

The BOT number crunchers are now suggesting we could be headed to JL territory.

 

[Iceman]

I always thought this movie would make less then any of the new films for various factors. But the numbers that might come in this weekend suggest something beyond that.

Yeah, so did I. Rogue 1 is the only film in the same ball park as a modern spinoff and I thought it would make less as Rogue One was the first film after TFA. But after TLJ I expected a softer number than if TLJ had been more in line with expectation and had a more widely liked treatment of Luke. Still expected very good domestic numbers regardless though.

 

[Iceman]

My honest guess is I think interest in the movie is low because we're getting a new Han Solo. While recasting doesn't hurt in some cases, I do think it hurt them here because Star Wars was always firmly a trilogy, then Ford came back for VII. Ford was just not a guy playing Han Solo, he WAS Han Solo. Now we're introduced to a new guy. One who was getting a lot of "He ain't Han!" in trailer reactions. I think that was an uphill battle.

Do you mean that it's not really possible to do an effective Han Solo prequel as only Harrison is capable of playing him (and for audiences to accept it)? I agree that Harrison totally Is Han Solo but wasn't Connery also the epitome of James Bond?

 

[Spider-Fan]

Do you mean that it's not really possible to do an effective Han Solo prequel as only Harrison is capable of playing him (and for audiences to accept it)? I agree that Harrison totally Is Han Solo but wasn't Connery also the epitome of James Bond?

At the time, but they didn't wait nearly 40 years for a new Bond. They did it really early into the franchise's life. So now a new Bond is normal. Star Wars was never normalized or attempted to be normalized like that. Until pretty much now.

 

[Flemm]

There are certainly some mixed messages at the moment. One movie suggests very strongly that excessive nostalgia is misplaced and that fans shouldn't have so much reverence for the past, then the next movie is an origin story based on fans having reverence for the past.

It's an odd time to ask people to get interested in a new incarnation of Han Solo.

Having said that, all of the genre fans in my circle of friends are/were planning to see the movie, so some of these dire predictions are surprising to me.

We shall see.

 

[Iceman]

There are certainly some mixed messages at the moment. One movie suggests very strongly that excessive nostalgia is misplaced and that fans shouldn't have so much reverence for the past, then the next movie is an origin story based on fans having reverence for the past.

It's an odd time to ask people to get interested in a new incarnation of Han Solo.

Good point.

Having said that, all of the genre fans in my circle of friends are/were planning to see the movie, so some of these dire predictions are surprising to me.

We shall see.

Most of the people I know who see these kinds of films will see it, they are just in less of a rush and less likely to go for a repeat viewing. Those who only really watch event movies won't necessarily bother seeing it in cinemas.

 

[Iceman]

At the time, but they didn't wait nearly 40 years for a new Bond. They did it really early into the franchise's life. So now a new Bond is normal. Star Wars was never normalized or attempted to be normalized like that. Until pretty much now.

I thought the long period makes the recast much more justifiable, otherwise you actually want Ford to play the guy, deaged or something. I thought the guy was fine as Solo but I know many thought he was wrong from the start.

 

[jmc]

There are certainly some mixed messages at the moment. One movie suggests very strongly that excessive nostalgia is misplaced and that fans shouldn't have so much reverence for the past, then the next movie is an origin story based on fans having reverence for the past.

It's an odd time to ask people to get interested in a new incarnation of Han Solo.

Having said that, all of the genre fans in my circle of friends are/were planning to see the movie, so some of these dire predictions are surprising to me.

We shall see.

This is part of the contradiction I mentioned in the other thread. It’s a ludicrous concept to have one movie say ‘get over it’, followed by the next practically begging for you to remember it.

 

[Evil Twin]

I'd suggest that the fact that it's a low stakes affair where we know that the three characters we care about are absolutely safe plays into a lack of excitement.

 

[SomeOldGuy]

I suspect the predictions of doom & gloom will prove overblown. I don’t think Solo will set any records (and never thought it would in the first place) but it will do business for the simple reason that it has absolutely no competition other than IW, which has been out for a month. If the family is going to the movies this weekend, Solo is the only new choice. Heck, my local Cinemark has a handful of showings of DM3, The Lorax, Sing and Secret Life of Pets, that’s how bleak the kids/family movie landscape is.

 

[jmc]

What the hell are you talking about? It’s got Deadpool 2 to contend with.

 

[SomeOldGuy]

What the hell are you talking about? It’s got Deadpool 2 to contend with.

Which is a raunchy R-rated comedy, not a family film.

 

[Iceman]

I suspect the predictions of doom & gloom will prove overblown. I don’t think Solo will set any records (and never thought it would in the first place) but it will do business for the simple reason that it has absolutely no competition other than IW, which has been out for a month. If the family is going to the movies this weekend, Solo is the only new choice. Heck, my local Cinemark has a handful of showings of DM3, The Lorax, Sing and Secret Life of Pets, that’s how bleak the kids/family movie landscape is.

No competition is good for walk up business for people who turn up to the cinema looking for something to see. It isn't good for getting people who weren't already going to the cinema to watch something to make an effort to go.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

No competition is good for walk up business for people who turn up to the cinema looking for something to see. It isn't good for getting people who weren't already going to the cinema to watch something to make an effort to go.

That's why releasing this movie on a holiday weekend is a smart move. There is more scope for walk-up business. But I dunno how much that'll help in the end. The pre-sales are way behind for SW movies. Maybe this'll play more like an MCU movie, i.e back-loaded over a 4 day weekend with Sunday staying more or less flat from Saturday. But Solo probably doesn't have that definite interest (what you posted about) or unaided awareness to pull off a big recovery at this point in time. I think the marketing hasn't been that great to rope in folks who were on the fence to begin with and the reviews didn't help.

 

[Spider-Fan]

The marketing for this movie kind of reminds me when you're watching a really good sports team that can score points at will, and as your watching the game you keep waiting for them to get hot and start attacking and they just kind of...don't. Meanwhile the other team builds a lead and while you expect them to come back, they just never do and lose. Maybe they finally get hot in last quarter or whatever, but ultimately they were too far behind and still lose. We were all waiting for marketing pushes to come for this, and they just came too late.

 

[C. Lee]

I thought the long period makes the recast much more justifiable, otherwise you actually want Ford to play the guy, deaged or something. I thought the guy was fine as Solo but I know many thought he was wrong from the start.

I think that would be true if Ford hadn't just played him in a SW movies a couple of years ago. They now have Ford re-enforced in their minds as Solo.

 

[Iceman]

I think that would be true if Ford hadn't just played him in a SW movies a couple of years ago. They now have Ford re-enforced in their minds as Solo.

I meant that it's obvious after seeing Harrison Ford as a 70 year old that that option is off the table for a young Solo film. When we had a Young Indiana Jones we had River Phoenix play him who is much less similar to Ford than Alden IMO. Are we saying that if they had made a young Indiana Jones film people wouldn't have been able to accept Phoenix as Jones either? Harrison's look/image as Indiana Jones is even stronger to me than as Han Solo but if we were getting a young version I'd be quite happy to see any new good actor give it a try. I'm sure I'm missing some subtle element here as it seems a bit confusing. I could understand if Ford still looked like he could feasibly play a 30 or 40 year old (even if the character is supposed to be much younger).

 

[Iceman]

That's why releasing this movie on a holiday weekend is a smart move. There is more scope for walk-up business. But I dunno how much that'll help in the end. The pre-sales are way behind for SW movies. Maybe this'll play more like an MCU movie, i.e back-loaded over a 4 day weekend with Sunday staying more or less flat from Saturday. But Solo probably doesn't have that definite interest (what you posted about) or unaided awareness to pull off a big recovery at this point in time. I think the marketing hasn't been that great to rope in folks who were on the fence to begin with and the reviews didn't help.

True. The marketing worked well for me (I had hardly any hype before it started), but yeah I saw a lot of people say it wasn't for them.

 

[SomeOldGuy]

Yup, marketing for this has been poor and the clusterfudge of a production didn’t help at all.

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

Admissions data from France:

Cine-Directors estimates

Solo : A star wars story 850 000

SW8-2,510,462 admissions.
SW7-3,002,116 admissions.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story 1 777 300

https://forums.boxofficetheory.com/...office-thread/?do=findComment&comment=3516877

Update (due to opening day being lowered):

Only 89 344 admissions OD and Cine-directors changed projections to 520k admissions.

For comparison
619 020 The Force Awakens
503 727 The Last Jedi
271 502 The Rogue One

https://forums.boxofficetheory.com/...office-thread/?do=findComment&comment=3518379

What we have so far....

France 70% drop from Rogue One
Italy 40% drop from RO
South Korea 87% drop from RO
Hong Kong 80% drop from TLJ

Honestly this is going to be a bomb of epic proportions.. I was pessimistic but we may be looking at sth like $250m OS which is beyond horrendous...

https://forums.boxofficetheory.com/...-theater-door/?do=findComment&comment=3518768

Scary OS numbers and beyond worse than I could have imagined or even wanted.

 

[Zant]

Australia, UK and Japan to the rescue....Or maybe not?

 

[Silver Surfer]

550-600m final finish?

 

[Iceman]

Update (due to opening day being lowered):



https://forums.boxofficetheory.com/...office-thread/?do=findComment&comment=3518379



https://forums.boxofficetheory.com/...-theater-door/?do=findComment&comment=3518768

Scary OS numbers and beyond worse than I could have imagined or even wanted.

Damn, those are some significant OS markets that are getting wiped out there.