Ticket sales for Solo: A Star Wars Story dropped more than 65 percent at the box office from the film’s opening weekend, which isn’t good for any film, let alone a Star Wars movie. Meanwhile, Avengers: Infinity War kept rising, while sci-fi action film Upgrade outperformed expectations.
The odds of Solo: A Star Wars Story hanging on for a second weekend win after the film’s underwhelming debut were slim, but that’s why you never tell Han Solo the odds.
The Star Wars smuggler’s origin film took a steep fall from its opening weekend, but was still the highest-grossing film at the domestic box office a week after its premiere. The $29.2 million the film earned was a week-to-week drop of more than 65 percent, which is a pretty big drop for any film, but extremely uncommon for a Star Wars movie.
At this point, it seems certain that 2018 will be the first time since 2014 that a Star Wars movie won’t be the highest-grossing movie of the year in US theaters. Ever since Disney relaunched the sci-fi franchise in 2015 with Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, each year’s Star Wars installment has been the biggest movie of the year domestically, but that trend appears likely to end as Marvel movies Avengers: Infinity War and Black Panther are currently engaged in an impressive race for the top spot.
Speaking of Infinity War, the Marvel team-up movie passed Jurassic World to slide into fourth place on the all-time worldwide box office rankings, and is now chasing third-place film The Force Awakens in the all-time record books. If it manages to maintain its current momentum, the film stands a decent chance of overtaking The Force Awakens and challenging second-place film Titanic ($2.18 billion) down the road.
As for the weekend’s new releases, lost-at-sea drama Adrift finished in third place for the weekend, but still fell short of pundits’ predictions for the movie. Audiences weren’t impressed with the film, and gave it a “B” grade, which might have something to do with its opening weekend numbers. Professional critics seemed to like it, though, and gave it a 71-percent “Fresh” rating on review aggregator RottenTomatoes.
The only other new films to crack the top ten were sci-fi action thriller Upgrade and comedy Action Point, and the two films had very different debuts.
Micro-budgeted feature Upgrade made back its production costs (and then some) with positive reviews from critics and general audiences alike, while Action Point was savaged by critics and earned poor reviews from audiences, and made well below studio projections.
This upcoming week will be an interesting one, as the poor performance by Solo has left the door open to some interesting new releases and returning films. Premiering in theaters this week is the actress-led heist sequel Ocean’s 8, as well as the horror movie Hereditary. There’s also the ensemble action thriller Hotel Artemis, and the Fred Rogers biopic Won’t You Be My Neighbor? also hitting theaters.
Basically, it’s a wide and varied slate of films premiering this week, so it’s anyone’s guess as to which film will end up the box-office champion when the dust settles.
