Solo: A Star Wars Story opened to positive reviews despite some massive problems behind the scenes, but it still underperformed at the box office, making only $392 million (a figure which completely changed Disney's plans for the franchise and seemingly killed a number of spinoffs, including movies revolving around Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi).
Now, director Ron Howard - who replaced original helmers Phil Lord and Chris Miller - has shared his thoughts on why he believes things didn't pan out particularly well for
Solo.
After noting that he thinks the movie's Memorial Day release didn't help it succeed from a financial standpoint, he added:
"Maybe it’s the idea that it’s too nostalgic. That going back and revisiting an origin story for a beloved character may not be what the fans were looking for. It seemed to me looking at the opening, big but not as big as the others, I think that was [only] the hardcore fans."
"[The drop-off] tells you how many people are tagalongs who need to wait to see what people think or if it’s essential, if it’s a zeitgeist movie or not. It didn’t hit the zeitgeist, for whatever reason."
As for the third reason he believes
Solo failed, Howard puts it down to
"agressive trolling...Not so much the Twitter feed," he explains,
"but it was notable prior to the release of the movie in several of the algorithms, whether it was Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes. There was an inordinate push down on the ‘want to see’ and on the fan voting. Some friends from Silicon Valley explained to me how it works. Under that circumstance, I did not take it personally at all but I felt badly."
Do you agree with these remarks or do you think was
Solo destined to fail from the start?