Solo: A Star Wars Story may have been the number one film at the box office this Memorial Day weekend, but it is still being looked at as a disappointment in terms of its performance. The film had been originally tracked to earn anywhere between $130 to $150 million at the box office, but wound up falling far short of that number, bringing in only $101 million.
The film’s foreign box office did not fare much better. In China it cleared the lowest amount ever for a Star Wars film in that country bringing in just $10 million.
The film’s box office drop off steadily increased as the weekend progressed. Its Thursday evening preview showings brought in $14 million, a strong number for such showings. However, that was followed by lesser than expected ticket sales on Friday so that by Saturday, the estimates for what Solo would earn over the four-day weekend had dropped from $130 million to $114.2 million. Ticket sales continued to under-perform throughout the weekend, ultimately delivering a domestic box office gross that struggled to break $100 million.
This weekend’s box office returns place the film on course for an overall domestic take of around $400 million. That is a figure that would place Solo as the lowest grossing Star Wars film since Disney bought Lucasfilm and relaunched the franchise with 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. With a film costing at least $250 million before factoring in marketing and distribution costs, Disney will probably be asking some tough questions to Lucasfilm about what went wrong with their strategy for this film and what can be done to make things better going forward.0′
