Author: Pamela McClintock / Source: The Hollywood Reporter
The Force is under siege.
Disney and Lucasfilm’s Solo: A Star Wars Story is struggling in its debut at the Memorial Day box office, where it’s coming in well behind expectations with an estimated three-day debut of $83.
3 million-plus and projected four-day debut of $101 million (numbers will be updated Monday morning). That’s even worse than forecasts earlier in the weekend.The news is altogether grim overseas, where Solo rolled out in every major market save Japan. The movie — which made a high-profile stop at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this month — is bombing with $65 million, including a dismal $10.1 million launch in China. The global bow is an estimated $148.3 million; many had thought it would fly to $300 million even though the Star Wars franchise has never been an enormous player internationally.
The Han Solo origin pic is pacing well behind fellow standalone movie, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), which opened to $155 million in North America. Solo blasts off a mere five months after Star Wars: The Last Jedi hit theaters, raising the possibility of fatigue. The movie’s performance is sure to prompt Lucasfilm and Disney to reevaluate their strategy for the marquee franchise.
“We are all over it, and will spend a lot of time digging into why things happened the way they did. We have a year and a half before Episode IX comes out,” says Disney distribution chief Dave Hollis. “We’ve had so much success.
The previous three Star Wars films did $4 billion worth of of buisness at the box office, so it doesn’t feel like saturation is necessarily an issue, but we are still answering all of the questions.Solo, directed by Ron Howard, is the first of the four titles in the revitalized series to brave the competitive summer box office, versus bowing in mid-December. The last three movies faced no immediate competition on their opening weekends, while Solo goes up against Deadpool 2, which launched a week ago and will take in a projected $53.5 million for the four-days.
Heading into the weekend, tracking suggested Solo would debut to $130 million-$150 million domestically. Box-office observers note that the movie is playing younger than other Star Wars installments,…
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