Is Star Wars fatigue starting to set in? Or, like the REEL360 Team, were audiences not that interested in seeing Solo: A Star Wars Story? According to comScore, the three-day opening estimates are currently sitting at $84.7 million, well below the $108.4 million Revenge of the Sith made in its first weekend. It’s also 46% below the opening of the other Star Wars Story – Rogue One.
Did someone say, “I got a bad feeling about this?”
Saturday returns for the Star Wars anthology film were less than forceful, registering at just $24.6 million, a 31 percent drop from Friday’s $35.8 million returns. Families that were expected to turn out for the film’s Memorial Day weekend opening, must have chosen to go to the beach or watch TV. Now Solo might not even finish in the top 5 highest openings for this holiday weekend.
As it stands, a $100 million four-day opening would be less than the launch for The Hangover Part II, which made $103 million in 2011. Solo is not only looking like it will have the lowest opening for a Disney Star Wars film, but will also fall lower than the prequels.
Say what?
The Solo domestic B.O. experience is reminiscent of Justice League, another movie aimed at superfans that many optimistically predicted would open at $110M-$120M, only to see the film collapse. In fact, Solo is coming in well below Justice League‘s $93.8M 3-day, and could match that pic’s 4-day of $101.3M, even though the DC film wasn’t technically a four-day opening bolstered by a holiday Monday. Overseas is a different story between the two pics as Justice League generated 65% of its global gross outside U.S./Canada, a ratio rivals aren’t expecting on Solo.
“It’s surprising for the film to have not done the business as we have hoped,” Disney Distribution Chief Dave Hollis said in a statement. “It’s disappointing when tracking is unpredictable when you get to levels like this and setting up expectations outside of where the film is landing. But, we come into a Memorial Day that’s doing a ton of business for the industry, and the last four weeks have been the biggest. It’s great for the business. Sure, Deadpool 2 jumping in front of the release and how available people turned out this weekend are factors, but with Solo we have a film that’s well received with great exits, and we have nothing in front of us for two weekends. We’ll measure the success of Solo at its finish.”
ALSO READ: ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’… yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah not really
With this start and anticipated films like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Disney/Pixar’s own Incredibles 2 coming in June, Solo might not even have the legs to reach the $657.9 million that Justice League made globally.
The other holdovers in theaters did pretty well. Deadpool 2 is expected to make $54 million over the four-day weekend, giving it an estimated domestic total after Monday of $218 million. That’s about 10 percent behind the pace set by the first Deadpool.
The top 12 domestic weekend box office estimates of Sunday, May 27, are below:
Solo: A Star Wars Story – Disney – $83.3M
Deadpool 2 – 20th Century Fox – $42.7M
Avengers: Infinity War – Disney – $16.5M
Book Club – Paramount – $9.4M
Life Of The Party – Warner Bros. – $5.1M
Breaking In – Universal – $4.1M
Show Dogs – Open Road – $3.1M
Overboard – Lionsgate – $3.0M
Quiet Place, A – Paramount – $2.2M
RBG – Magnolia Pictures – $1.1M
Rampage – Warner Bros. – $0.8M
Super Troopers 2 – 20th Century Fox – $0.6M
Below is the global box office chart:
