Is it now permissible to use the term “Solo collapse”? Over the last two days it’s gone from being an “uh-oh, not doing as well as expected” to an “aagghh, I’m melting, I’m melting!…oh, what a world, what a world!”
Posted Sunday morning by Deadline‘s Anthony D’Allessandro: Solo: A Star Wars Story is now sinking well below its $130M projection with Disney now reporting the pic’s three-day at $83.3M and four-day at $101M. Industry estimates are in sync with what Disney is seeing.
“As we already detailed in the previous update, Solo‘s weekend prospects were dragged down by a maelstrom of fan negativity toward the concept and/or behind-the-scenes problems” — — i.e., the absurdity of casting the short, small-shouldered, beady-eyed Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo — “as well as summer tentpole and Star Wars movie over-saturation (we just had Last Jedi in December).
“The under-performance of Solo is a high-class problem for Disney, and they’re the victims of their own success especially when you consider that their first three Star Wars movies grossed $4.45 billion worldwide. Solo reps a barometer of how well [forthcoming] classic character spinoffs” — i.e. James Mangold‘s Boba Fett project — “can do.”
“Remember that when Marvel first launched Thor ($65.7M), Captain America ($65M) and Ant-Man ($57.2M), they didn’t over-wow in their opening weekends, but continued on as a franchise. With the great exit scores for Solo, perhaps it’s destined for a better future off its A- CinemaScore and 89% overall positive and four-stars on PostTrak.”
What morons out there gave Solo an A-minus? At best it’s a B or B-minus, if that.
If you believe in fairies, text all your friends and tell them to not see Solo today. Tomorrow or later this week, fine, but not today. If enough of them get the message, we can prevent Solo‘s four-day tally from cresting the $100M mark. We can do it, boys and girls, if you believe.