ST What Does Poor Solo Box Office Mean For Episode 9?

We never asked for Ant-Man either but the MCU was able to sell it.

 

Solo is just about to pass Ant-Man's domestic take. Just sayin'....

 

Ant-Man followed Age of Ultron which was probably one of the MCU's biggest 'mess' movies, which resulted in a lot of firings and restructures, with a box office dropoff from opening similar to Last Jedi but not as extreme. Essentially Ant-Man *was* the Solo of that franchise in terms of a disliked movie before it (though nowhere near of the same magnitude) and an unwanted character. That being said, it didn't cost what Solo cost, so was much more of an actual success afaik, plus led into more ways to tie into the main movies right away, unlike Solo which is really a story deadend for the time being.

 

It means JJ needs to pull finger & come up with a ripper of a movie.......

 

It will motivate Lucasfilm/Disney to do a better job marketing Episode IX.

 

Exactly. TLJ was misrepresented by it's trailers. Yet more sand in the Vaseline. In fact, all of Disney's SW films have misrepresented the actual product. (For the most part, prequel LFL trailers were on topic. As opposed to, "... those eyes! THOSE EYES!!!! THOSE EYES!!!!!" "...The Force is strong in my family.... You have that power too.")

9 needs straightforward marketing. Cut the surprises and deliver a meat and potatoes drama that will gain audiences through word of mouth, instead of being screamed at from the TV, "Wait for 8!!! Don't be spoiled!!!! SEE IT FOR YOURSELF!!!!!" Those spin doctors knew that movie was a tough sell. They sold the sizzle instead of the steak.

 

To be honest I think TLJ's trailers were very accurate to what the film was going to be like. They flat out told people in the trailer that the movie wasn't going to go the way we thought. Guess what, it didn't, and because of that some fans got mad.

 

Unfortunately it was exactly what I thought, and worse. Really cheap shallow bland cliche statements about the force, way too much jerking over shorts of the island, and a bunch of recreated scenes from the other movies, with no apparent important plot for Finn (I was hoping they were hiding it). I felt like I was taking crazy pills when people said it was a great trailer, but the critic hype built up my hopes which were then dashed even worse than expected.

 

And? is that suppose to be anything special? Because the last time I checked, this movie is barely getting to $200 million alone, and surpassing Ant-Man don't mean anything as the movie total worldwide box office gross was $580 million. Solo is at what? $330 something and change? Not inspiring for a gloat. I'm just saying.

The problem with TLJ moving forward is can star wars fans and fans in general accept different takes to star wars that were very different than before? Can Disney move away from the OT and start coming out with original content? Do we really know what GL had planned for the sequel trilogy after all? We have tid bits, but not the whole story. Can star wars tell different stories in all eras not related to the big 6? Will fans buy into it? or just the star wars followers? What made star wars successful in the first place?

Let's face it, Disney has gotten to a wonderful start with its first three star wars movies. They made close to $4.4 billon at the box office. There were problems, and what not but they came out on top. They ruled the domestic box office from 2015-2017 and took the international crown world wide in 2015 and 2017. In fact, the first three Disney movies made a little bit more than GL 6 movies put together unadjusted. So star wars was not that bad.

Solo is tougher because it was a lesser character driven story that Lucasfilm thought they could get Iron Man response. Yes, Han Solo is popular, but a Tony Stark never, and the marketing was just way off. Nothing big or significant or pulse pounding that would get the public going to the movies. In the trailer, when Han Solo said, "See, nothing to worry about." Was so bland that instead of making me wanting to watch the movie, it made me want to watch Avenger: IW and Deadpool 2 more. Nothing inspiring on the Solo trailer.

It will be tough no matter what for Lucasfilm. They know they can't come out with small character stories and invest that kind of money and lose. That's not how Bob Iger works. On a better note, Incredibels 2 looks to make up the ground that Solo lost.

 

how was TLJ trailers misrepresenting the movie? It actually looked and felt a lot like the movie that was released.. please can you elaborate?

@vong333 TLJ is a disliked movie....by those who disliked it. Which is only a part of the audience, and i'm not too sure it's even a big part (even if it was...50/50 doesn't mean disliked movie. it means divisise movie, both hated and loved by different people with different tastes)

 

Episode 9 will probably be fine and it will probably be good(with none of the OT humans alive, it will focus mostly on the new characters). It will have a 1.5 year gap to build up to(and have little serious competition). A bit like ROTJ and ROTS(and being released in the last year of this decade), it will almost certainly have a symbolic importance for the franchise. The 2020's will have non-numbered trilogies(unrelated to the main story) , and a live action non-Jedi Tv series. 2020 might, to deal with fatigue, might be SW movie free(but the show is running).

 

They were marketing Jack-Jack a lot for it.

 

ALL DISNEY SW FILMS HAVE MISREPRESENTED THE PLOT / DIRECTION OF THEIR FILMS. TLJ'S TRAILERS WERE HIGHLY MISLEADING TO THE MOVIE'S DIRECTION. LFL PREQUEL TRAILERS WERE MORE FORTHCOMING WITH THE FILM'S DIRECTION. THE PRODUCT ADVERTISED WAS NOT THE PRODUCT RECEIVED. ONE MIGHT SAY TLJ TRAILERS MESH WITH THE MOVIE. ANOTHER PERSON MAY VEHEMENTALLY DISAGREE. ARGUEMENT BAIT ENDS HERE.

 

may i say that writing in capital letters doesnt make a sentence truer? Or that the end of a discussion is decided by mods?

I'm honestly curious about what's so misleading about TLJs trailers? They seemed quite representative of the movie to me: something more introspective at times, Luke questioning his own legacy, Rey looking for her place in all this. And big space battles + Crait battle. And Luke's "this is not going the way you expect" is the contrary of misleading too.

Now if people mean the trailers dont reveal the whole movie...well...isnt that supposed to be a good thing?

 

I would bet you that most moviegoers know who Han Solo is but didn’t know who Iron Man was outside of a Black Sabbath song, if they knew that. I mean, Han was only in the second biggest film ever, plus three other giant box office hits, and of the 4, three were generational hits.

The problem is, Han is not James Bond or whoever from Marvel - he’s Harrison Ford. Plus they cavalierly turned him into a comedy act and killed him in TFA, so new fans don’t know him as anything but old guy and old fans were angry he was dead.

So it’s about to pass Ant Man. How many moviegoers knew who Ant Man was versus Han Solo?

 

What this means for IX is likely more mainstream and casual outreach since the Solo movie, which was made more so with hardcore fans in mind, didn’t hook mainstream and casual fan audiences and showed that the hardcore fandom can’t prop up a film on its own any more than the biggest Trek fans can Trek films (Solo is about to pass Star Trek Beyond actually in WW box office soon as an aside.)

It could also lead them to believe that the hardcore fandom has never been less supportive regardless of what’s on offer & that they have permanently lost some fans so the opinion might be to offset for those who have checked out by doubling down on crowdpleasing mainstream outreach instead and continuing the ST’s box office success by building a larger box office coalition between half the hardcore fandom that remains engaged and excited, continued outreach to the new and emerging tween/YA Reylo contingent, and mainstream, casual audiences who just want large scale stakes and action and crowdpleasing ending elements and surprises.

They may also do some market research to determine which hardcore fans have checked out most & why, and what the remaining hardcore fans are looking forward to most alongside the other coalition to ensure that they don’t waste their time focusing on the wants of those who are no longer interested & to better ensure the needs of those who are end up being met to stop the bleeding. In politics it’s all about finding the largest and strongest coalition & when choices have been made that have ended the possibility of appealing to the demands of some voter demographics who promise to take their votes more so to the fringe or to stay at home entirely then campaigns instead reach more for the middle to ensure they have larger mainstream and centrist & casual support while also ensuring that the the base they do have left feels looked after.

So, it’s likely great news for many people who’ve enjoyed the ST so far.

 

I think Solo's "poor" box office means we won't be getting any other prequel type movies, except for a stand-alone Kenobi (already in production IMO), and maybe a Solo sequel (with a smaller budget). Both of which I think are good ideas, BTW.

I just think the Boba Fett movie will take place post-Sarlaac Pit, rather than prior to ESB, so that Mangold film won't really feel like a prequel because no one knows what happened to Fett after he survived that.

Solo's BO results likely mean no stand-alone Lando movie (boo), and nothing like a 12 year old Leia movie with the Stranger Things star (or someone similar), no Clone Wars era Jedi movie, and no pre-TPM Yoda prequel...Those are probably scratched off the boards, with focus going to the GoT guys first movie, the Favreau streaming series, Kenobi and Fett.

Production wise, I think even Rian Johnson's supposed trilogy is taking a back seat until after 9 (though I'm sure he's writing away). I think given the blu-ray sales of TLJ and toy sales of TLJ, his series would be the first on the chopping block unless Episode 9 does gangbusters at the box office. If 9 doesn't do better than TLJ at the box office, then the blame is going to go to Johnson for "killing" the trilogy that started off with such a blockbuster, and LFL/Disney will move on from Johnson and focus on other projects with some kind of amicable parting of ways announcement.

 

I don’t think SOLO or TLJ will have much impact on Episode 9. The marketing for Episode 9 will be better than TLJ and SOLO. The movie will be more lighter in tone which will increase repeat viewings especially if the movie is really good. It is the last movie in the Skywalker saga or at least it will be promoted as such. SOLO tanked not because it is a terrible movie it is just a movie not many people wanted to see. Episode 9 would have to be utterly terrible for audiences not to check it out.

 

Solo's low box office take did affect things as the article on the main page of this site shows. Disney is putting on hold the anthology films and proceeding with the RJ trilogy and the Weiss movies. Very good move on their part and it shows that Disney does pay attention. Episode 9 will be fine if anything, it could be even better. Failure tends to bring the best, and while Solo was a bit of downer, they'll pick it up.

 

Before the release of that Collider article, I didnt think that the Solo BO results would have any impacts on 9. I was thinking that Disney would just roll with the punches on that one.

But with that Collider news saying that Disney and Lucasfilm are shelving the anthology stuff for now, for me, this completely changes my viewpoint. Whilst still trying to maintain the direction they want to go in, I think this will be balanced with them trying to reunite the fanbase and doing abit of fan pleasing. And the two big ones I think is that they will somehow bring Luke back to life in the flesh and they will make Rey related again.

Because I found that Trevorrow tweet (and MH replying to him) very interesting the other day; and even more so in light of this news from Collider. I felt the other day, Trevorrow and Hamill were talking in code and it was less about Trevorrow's son and more about JJ Abrams re-writing the script for 9 and then saying sorry to RJ that he has had to retcon some of his ideas in 8; ie. Luke and Rey, etc.

So I now believe that the poor SOLO BO result will indeed influence what happens in 9 from the perspective of trying to rekindle the love of Star Wars in fans who have become disenchanted.

 

Ignoring all of this continued broken-record, ad nauseum "TLJ sucks" and "Marvel vs SW" junk, I think there are some important consideration (I mean in terms of what the thread title is actually asking).

1) Solo was marketed based on it being a lower-budget Anthology film (which is was without the production problems); so "improving the marketing" is sort of a moot point.

2) The marketing turned out successfully for all of the other films so far, in particular for the saga films, so I don't think it really warrants much of a change for IX.

Solo's failings at the box office are meaningful in terms of what they do with other movies going forward (e.g. can the Boba movie and give careful consideration to stopping OT back stories altogether; come with something interesting that will hook the GA when IX is concluded); they won't have much of an effect on IX..

 

The three biggest issues here for Disney was they announced a Solo movie on the back of killing of Han, thinking people would want to see his backstory and hoping the emotions of his death would "entice" people to watch this when ignoring the fact of what the fans truly wanted to see and had been asking for.

The next and biggest issue on making a Solo film, is that casual fans especially and then the main fans, only cared about Harrison Ford as Han Solo and therefore by replacing him with someone else, just wasn't going to sell this movie and Disney and KK should have realized this, but based upon my first point and the success of TFA they got carried away with the ££ signs and basically turned Sith.

Finally, The Last Jedi. Disney created a gash in the franchise with the direction they took and Solo only helped make that gash wider, rather than help close it again. I personally feel KK totally misjudged a lot on the direction of the new trilogy and did not give the fans, the casual film goers what they wanted to see, which after 30+ years has proven critical as they are now finding out.

I really don't know how they are going to save episode IX at this point and feel that the next lot of not saga films will now be re-visited in order to create more fan service as a way to potentially hold the franchise for the near future at least.

 

It's sad that the possible Kenobi movie is put on hold. Ask many people and their reaction was, "We never wanted a Han Solo movie, we want a Ewan McGregor Kenobi movie!" Could it have been successful? I have no idea, but at least it would have had better word of mouth than Solo.

 

In modest box office achievement news, Solo will have passed Star Trek Beyond today (despite worse reviews, a similar young cast playing known characters but with less acceptance than Trek had by movie 3, more problems in production, being the first SW movies released 5 months after another, and coming shortly after the epic Infity War) when the Wednesday data is eventually posted. Doesn’t mean much obviously but at least they passed that. Both movies largely ignored by casuals & the average person we work with & supported mostly by the diehards in their respective communities.



http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/?pagenum=4&p=.htm

 

Still ST Beyond seems to have been profitable.
Obviously Solo expectations were to high and the production costs were horrible.
I just do not understand why they are not able to make a SW anthology movie with the budget of a Star Trek movie. If it is profitable and the fans like it - where is the problem?