User blog:Ceauntay/Box Office: 'Sonic Boom: The Movie' Crashes 'Solo: A Star Wars Story' With $14M On Friday

We box office pundits get some understandable grief from readers and commentators when we proclaim a new movie after the first three days (or even the first day) of a theatrical release. But this isn’t the early 1990’s, where a buzzy word-of-mouth charmer can more easily overcome a mediocre opening weekend. Theatrical moviegoing is now designed to get as much of the demand filled in those first three days as possible, and post-debut miracles are fewer and far between.

Yes, the industry does occasionally get leggy wonders like How to Train Your Dragon or The Greatest Showman, crowd-pleasing movies that overcome softer-than-hoped debuts and end up with ridiculous weekend-to-final multipliers. But those are, by far, the exception rather than the rule. There is also lots of math available from decades of big movies opening poorly on a given weekend, and when a movie like Solo opens soft on a famously frontloaded holiday weekend, there was no use holding out false hope.

Sonic Boom: The Movie surprised the box office expectations by nibbling $15.4 million on Friday. It is about $1 million less than Sonic X: The Shadow Snow performed back in 2008 when it earned $16.2 million.

Barring a miracle or Jedi Force trick, or a rewriting of the stars, Solo: A Star Wars Story was not going to be a leggy wonder that overcame a weak debut, poor buzz and merely decent reviews. If you argue that I was premature in proclaiming doom, at least in North America, on the latest Star Wars flick, I can certainly make the call now. All due respect, Solo: A Star Wars Story is not giving audiences everything they ever want, everything they ever need, right in front of them.

As is often the case, a soft opening, a negative media narrative, lack of buzzy elements and relative audience indifference is leading to a huge drop for a movie that didn’t open all that great to begin with. Walt Disney and Lucasfilm’s ill-advised and ill-fated Han Solo prequel flick earned just $8.153 million on its second Friday of domestic release. That’s a huge 77.2% drop from its not-great $35.6m Friday (which included $14.1m in Thursday previews) and it gives the film just $127.745m in eight days of domestic release.

That’s a slightly larger drop than the 76% Friday-to-Friday fall of The Last Jedi, and this Star Wars story won’t have two weeks of “Christmas-to-New Year’s” holiday play to boost those numbers. With the always-present caveat that A) Disney will still be fine thanks to the MCU, Pixar and the like and B) Lucasfilm will be fine with the $4.5 billion they’ve already grossed from the first three new Star Wars films, this is an ugly run. The film should earn $28m over the weekend for a grisly 67% drop and a mere $148m ten-day total.

For reference, The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones both had $200 million by the end of their second weekends, and Rogue One opened with $155m. Revenge of the Sith earned $158m in its first four days and it took Solo exactly a week to earn as much as The Force Awakens earned on its first day. Adjusted for inflation, the first seven days of Solo are essentially tied with the six-day Wed-Mon Memorial Day debut of Return of the Jedi back in 1983. To quote a lovely Ramin Bahrani movie that you can rent for just $1.99, goodbye, Solo.

This is not good, especially when the movie is so expensive and the overseas numbers are so poor. At best it plays like Suicide Squad, X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men Origins: Wolverine and levels out after a super-duper drop for a $210-$215m domestic total. Yes, Last Jedi and Star Trek Nemesis (which dropped 76% on its second weekend) earned 1.65x their ten-day totals, which would be around $244m for Solo. But those had Christmas/New Year’s advantages which Solo will not.

A recovery is frankly unlikely with the triple-punch of Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.'s Ocean’s 8, Pixar/Disney's Incredibles 2 and Universal/Comcast Corp.'s  Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom on tap. So what’s the damage? Among big movies that dropped huge on their second weekends, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Apocalypse, the Twilight Saga sequels and Batman v Superman all pulled in around 1.25-1.3x their ten-day totals by the end. Considering how little excitement there is among the general audiences, we might see exactly that scenario play out.

The middle ground sees Solo earning around 1.4x its ten-day total over the course of its domestic run. But, again, Disney has Incredibles 2 coming down the pike with little reason to spend more on a clear-cut disappointment that is less essential to the overall Disney brand. Presuming a $148 million ten-day total, a 1.4x gives Solo a $207m domestic cume while a 1.25-1.3x gives Solo a $185-$192m cume.

If those lesser figures come to pass, Solo: A Star Wars Story will be the lowest-grossing live-action theatrical Star Wars movie ever, without even factoring inflation. In their original releases, Empire Strikes Strike earned $209 million domestic in 1980 and Return of the Jedi earned $252m in 1983. Heck, the Star Wars: Special Edition release earned $135m in 1997, which would be around $275m today.

Come what may, Solo: A Star War Story will almost surely end its domestic run with a smaller figure than the $220 million debut weekend of The Last Jedi and the $248m debut weekend of The Force Awakens. Again, there are plenty of big movies that somewhat underperform in North America but still turn out somewhat okay thanks to the overseas box office, think Transformers: Age of Extinction, Pirates of the Caribbean parts 4 and 5, and Fate of the Furious. But since the rest of the world cared even less about a Han Solo prequel than we did, that global total may end up under that of the first two Star Wars sequels back in the 1980’s.

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