It was not a great weekend for ’Star Wars’ or Johnny Knoxville, although Leigh Whannel and Shailene Woodley received good news.
Disney’s hopes that Solo: A Star Wars Story would pick up speed on positive word of mouth and rebound after its disappointing opening weekend were scuttled by a 66 percent tumble in its second weekend. It still held on to first place but took a nosedive, scoring only $29 million. It’s earned around $148 million after 10 days, which is less than Rogue One earned in its first three days of release.
Is it Star Wars fatigue? Or is there something else at play here? The movie may not be earth-shattering, but it’s still fun, and I remain perplexed as to why the Star Wars faithful would not want to come out for a Han Solo film, even if it does lack Harrison Ford.
Should Disney worry about future Star Wars films, or just the stand-alone films? Or is this limited to only Solo? Because things aren’t faring any better overseas, where Solo performed weakly in China and is otherwise experiencing a lackluster box-office performance elsewhere. Disney has to be a little worried about their franchise, considering that its beginning to show wear and tear after only five films under the Disney banner, with at least seven more films in the works. But then again, maybe we’ll look back on Solo as the Thor: The Dark World of the Star Wars universe, the movie where Disney realized that an “OK” film won’t hack it and redouble their efforts to put out a better product (again, not that Solo was bad. It just wasn’t necessary).
