Still not quite buying it. There have been, by my count, 19 Marvel movies. Solo’s domestic is higher than 5 of them. Most of those - Thor, Thor: The Dark World, Ant Man, Captain America: The First Avenger and The Incredible Hulk - were early in the process.
Where Solo really lost ground was the international market. It pulled only 43.6% of its BO from the overseas market where the other Disney films pulled between 49% and 55%. For whatever reason, it didn’t sell overseas.
It’s the fourth Disney Star Wars movie and one that nobody wanted. From the second it was announced the most enthusiastic thing I heard about it in person or in press was “I guess I’ll probably see it if I can get a baby sitter.”
The other 3 Disney Star Wars movies had average box office receipts of $1.5B.
This movie being a bomb is all about it being unwanted in the first place, not because Star Wars isn’t a good property.
I think they’re just saturating the market, and the production difficulties Solo had were discussed a lot before the movie came out. And I’m not sure why they released it in May, so soon after the controversial The Last Jedi. If we just had one Star Wars movie each December that would be enough.
For another comparison item to make the same point: the latest James Bond movie, the one that made a ton of money and so has Daniel Craig coming back for another outing as 007 after all? Yeah, it . . . didn’t actually gross as much money, during its entire run in the United States, as SOLO has so far.
But overseas? Yeah, overseas it did great; but SOLO didn’t.
Domestically, SOLO just passed each of the recent MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE films that did so well that Tom Cruise naturally has yet another one coming out this month. But it didn’t do nearly as well overseas as GHOST PROTOCOL or ROGUE NATION: each of those grossed more overseas than SOLO has total.
Domestically, SOLO is getting closer and closer to last year’s FATE OF THE FURIOUS; but it makes no difference whether it actually gets there, because nobody believes it’ll gross a billion dollars in theaters overseas like that one did.
And so on.
It’s actually an interesting trend. I went into my last post thinking that the international box office would be around 65%. That’s about what most big blockbusters do these days. At least the ones with American pull.
Infinity War: 66.9%
Black Panther: 48.0%
Jurassic World: 70.2%
Deadpool 2: 56.7%
Incredibles 2: 30.8% (Not yet open everywhere)
Ready Player One: 76.5%
Operation Red Sea: 99.7% (limited US release)
Detective Chinatown 2: 99.6% (ditto)
Rampage: 76.8%
Solo: A Star Wars Story: 43.6%
But here’s the numbers for the recent run of Star Wars stories:
The Force Awakens: 54.7%
The Last Jedi: 53.5%
Rogue One: 49.6%
Solo: 43.6%
So I think it’s a trend. Star Wars movies are, for whatever reason, inherently less viable in overseas markets than other big blockbuster movies. I don’t know the reason but I think the trend is clear.
Hmm. Looking at the prequel trilogy it seems to hold up there, as well.
TPM: 53.8%
AoTC: 52.2%
RoTS: 55.2%
So what’s going on there?
I’m surprised TLJ even did that much foreign BO, as it completely tanked in China.
I think, perhaps, the answer lies in the fact that the original trilogy opened in the 70’s and 80’s. How much global reach did the original trilogy have back then? Do people in non-English speaking countries have affection for the original trilogy?
Rogue One and Solo exist because of the original trilogy, and to a large extent have their own charm due to references to the original trilogy. For people unfamiliar with the original trilogy (i.e., outside the USA), they fall flat (or even flatter depending on your opinion of them). I don’t know what China was doing in the 70’s and 80’s, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t watching Star Wars movies.
Even in the US, many of the Star Wars fans (and actually much of the overall population) weren’t even alive when the original trilogy was in the theaters.
They really should have laid the groundwork by aggressively marketing a foreign rerelease of the original trilogy, in theaters and on video.
Rereleases of old movies are relatively uncommon nowadays, especially given that people have various ways they can see old movies if they want (streaming, disc, etc).
But they could read them
Darren Garrison, that Chinese Star Wars comic is AMAZING! Thank you! I can’t even pick a favorite part, but Obi Wan Kenobi’s pad having a J&B scotch theme, like some college kid’s dorm room, might be the current leader.
As I recall, they were extremely uncommon in the ‘80s and ‘90s too, but Lucasfilm did them multiple times domestically. (The only other major rerelease I can think of from recent decades is “Titanic”.)
Agreed. I think my favourite is Darth Vader’s triceratops. Or Younger Obi-Wan’s sweet ride - Dredd’s Lawmaster meets Romero’s Knightriders. I must have missed that in the prequels 
I also love how any vessel never seems to be drawn quite the same way from panel to panel. The X-Wings are the only relatively consistent ones.
I liked that half the stormtroopers are wearing Boba Fett’s armor. Including Han & Luke when they were rescuing Leia. And Tarkin is apparently being played by Peter Dinklage.
It makes me wonder what source material the writer & artist were using. They clearly didn’t watch the movie. They probably read the novelization - the part about sandpeople being part organic, part mechanical is straight from the novel. So maybe that plus some stills & magazine articles with pictures? It also appears that comic artists giving female characters impressive cleavage is universal.
That comic deserves it’s own thread, it’s so delightfully trippy. I agree they must have had some visual references, and availability of stills. Panel 65, for example, is an obvious swipe of this familiar image. On the other hand, most of the spaceships are bizarrely off, like the rocket-shaped Millennium Falcon or the Rebel blockade runner that looks like a communications satellite.
And come on. No snark about Uncle Owen’s cowboy hat?
Done.
Wow. That is one weird Chinese comic strip.
Or the Imperial Stardestroyer that looks an awful lot like the Space Battleship Yamato: http://images.sgcafe.net/2013/11/10250030a4.jpg
Weird that Ant-Man and the Wasp is being heralded as a success even though it had a worse opening weekend domestic gross than Solo. I guess Marvel is allowed to have modest break-even movies and Star Wars isn’t? Did they keep the budget low? Are they banking on the foreign box office?
Well, it opened bigger than the first one.
The first Ant-Man movie grossed $519 million worldwide on a budget of $130 million. Toss in the merchandising and I figure Marvel/Disney ain’t crying.
