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yeah, I'm flabbergasted they released Solo when and how they did.


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I think there might actually be something behind it.

Disney/ lucasarts knows how to market a movie. IMHO They deliberately didn't with Solo. Did they want to test something?

On a related note, Disney/Lucasfilm is already starting to tease Episode IX. Looks like they may have realized they screwed up the marketing on Solo and are jumping the shark in the other direction now.

A note in passing. I saw the link to the article, noted its presence, and kept on browsing. It was five minutes before I realized I had passed by a STAR WARS article because I had no interest in the subject.

They tried the John Carter ad campaign for Solo and got similar results. Who knew?

My understanding is after the major costs associated with all the reshoots they knew what was coming and just wrote it off. They new solo would finacially bomb because its original budget nearly doubled. Thats why they didnt spend all the time and money promoting it. It would have just been a bunch of money they spent on something where they were already cutting their their losses.

If the production costs hadn’t ballooned out of control, would it have been profitable?

Unfortunately we can only speculate. But 250M is gigantic budgetwise for an off movie. if ywe take the more "reasonable" 150M or even 200M it would not have been a loss . Traditionally movies like this need to make double their budget at the box office. Tough part of that is recouping costs of marketing so it's complicated and Lucasarts ain't gna spill the actual beans. yet.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
If the production costs hadn’t ballooned out of control, would it have been profitable?

Solo is the most expensive Star Wars movie to date and supposedly it just sort of broke even... maybe.

If the movie cost the original 150ish Mil it was supposed to have cost they would have spent more on marketing to support it and who knows how much more profitable it would have been. There is a direct correlation to marketing and theater profits. SW also traditionally does terrible in china where a lot of other franchises go to double their profits.

Solo certainly did not break even.

All the same, it doesn't make any sense to "let" a franchise film flop because it went over budget. This isn't just about one movie succeeding or failing but rather goes to the future of an entire brand.

I really cannot imagine Disney being OK with handing $80 million to Ron Howard to reshoot approx. 70% of the film just to say, sorry we're not going to spend money marketing this.

The problem wasn't lack of an advertising budget, it was lack of lead time on advertising. This is purely a matter of Solo releasing hard on the heels of TLJ. So, again, the real question is, why was it so important to Disney that Solo come out only five months after TLJ?

That is a mystery to me. It just didn’t make any sense to release it at that time.

In Europe it's the main school exam season.

If they would have held it till Christmas and have some advanced screenings to generate positive buzz they might have been able to bring in way more people.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
In Europe it's the main school exam season.

It's Labor Day weekend (a three-day weekend) in the States, traditionally the season opening for summer blockbusters. It's no mystery why Solo would release on that particular weekend, if it had already been decided to not release it around Christmas; rather, the mystery is, why not release at Christmas? Especially considering the previous SW had just been released plus another corporate family studio had a huge release right before (two huge releases, if we count Black Panther). I have read rumors that Disney demanded Lucasfilm have Solo ready for Labor Day, at whatever cost (hence the expensive reshoots). But why? I guess there could have been concern that a delay would look bad on the back of so much talk about the troubled production but that seems very week. Perhaps they (mistakenly) figured TLJ would actually propel Solo? That's a more plausible misreading, IMO. But again, it is hard to square stingy marketing with exorbitant spending on reshoots.

Audiences were aware of the film. I just don't think there just was a big demand for Han Solo's backstory, especially with a new and fairly unknown actor in a role so closely identified with another actor. It's not nearly as simple as moar advertising = moar buzz and interest. And the film wasn't good enough to earn raves and pick up steam through word-of-mouth.

There were lots of factors at work. Thinking about my kids and their (relative lack of) interest and (positive but muted) reaction to the film, I wonder how much interest there was among the younger audiences who bug parents to take them to see movies. It's not like the kids raised on TFA, TLJ, Clone Wars and Rebels have much attachment to the Han Solo character.

 Manchu wrote:
Solo certainly did not break even.

All the same, it doesn't make any sense to "let" a franchise film flop because it went over budget. This isn't just about one movie succeeding or failing but rather goes to the future of an entire brand.

I'd say that depends on the situation, though. WB *clearly* did that with Justice League. They could have delayed it and kept spending money to clean up all the rushed CGI and make more tweaks. It's quite literally impossible that the studio looked at that film and thought it represented their best -- or even a good -- effort. But they recognized that more time and money was just more lipstick on a pig, and released the thing so they could put it behind them ASAP.

Solo was different, but they might have known it wasn't going to hit the box office out of the park no matter what they did.

Yeah, I am also not convinced that Solo's problem was lack of marketing. I think people knew about the film and just did not bother to see it. But I don't think it's because there is any demographic that's been "raised on" TFA or TLJ or that Han Solo is not a compelling character. Indeed, this kind of film is well-suited to the kind of folks who like Clone Wars and Rebels. I think that TLJ put a deeper hurt on the franchise than studio execs understand and it needed (and still needs) more time to heal.

Justice League, and the whole WB/DC debacle, is really not comparable.

What's the holiday situation in China during that timeframe? Disney may be trying to maximize their profits there by pushing it as a regular summer blockbuster.

That said, we know they've wanted the summer slot for a while now, I seem to recall TLJ or Rogue One being originally planned for a summer release date too.

So it's entirely possible that Disney put their foot down to try to get this release schedule on track.

Or maybe they knew they were going to take a hit post TLJ and opted to release sooner so they could give people time to get over Star Wars fatigue?


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Also, in the off-chance that someone here hasn't seen it. I think RLM offered a fair, even-handed review.

 Manchu wrote:
Rich Evans is the smartest guy on RLM.

When Jay says he didn't get any feelings from the movie, especially between Han and Qi'ra, I just kept in mind that he loved that bizarro worm sex scene from that one Best of the Worst episode.

 Manchu wrote:
Yeah, I am also not convinced that Solo's problem was lack of marketing. I think people knew about the film and just did not bother to see it. But I don't think it's because there is any demographic that's been "raised on" TFA or TLJ or that Han Solo is not a compelling character. Indeed, this kind of film is well-suited to the kind of folks who like Clone Wars and Rebels. I think that TLJ put a deeper hurt on the franchise than studio execs understand and it needed (and still needs) more time to heal.

Justice League, and the whole WB/DC debacle, is really not comparable.

Justice League was a most enjoyable Marvel style film - not a steaming pile of gak like TLJ

I imagine Execs will also be looking at the Blu-ray/ DVD market for TLJ and Solo - I paid for TLJ I certainly won't waste any more money on the DVD, however I will watch Solo on Sky and if tis good will buy the DVD.

Marvel style, but lacking in their recent quality by a lot. And if anything it's production is polar opposite to TLJ. Justice league suffered from lack of clear direction and focus at the top lvl. TLJ does not, if anyhting it suffers from a lack of such interference. Justice league has a by the numbers superhero get together macguffin plot. TLJ is anything but a committee mas marketing movie. No matter how flashy the visuals.

I haven't seen Solo yet. Mostly because I went to see Infinity war and I don't visit cinema's very often. So think Solo's biggest issues are franchise (sort of) fatigue, overcrowded slot and lack of marketing build up. In the build to TFA or TLj there was no escaping the building around the movie whereas with Solo absolutely non.

 Manchu wrote:
Yeah, I am also not convinced that Solo's problem was lack of marketing. I think people knew about the film and just did not bother to see it. But I don't think it's because there is any demographic that's been "raised on" TFA or TLJ or that Han Solo is not a compelling character. Indeed, this kind of film is well-suited to the kind of folks who like Clone Wars and Rebels. I think that TLJ put a deeper hurt on the franchise than studio execs understand and it needed (and still needs) more time to heal.

Justice League, and the whole WB/DC debacle, is really not comparable.

Among the diehard fans who post on internet forums, TLJ probably left a mark, but I just haven't heard that kind of negative reaction IRL from the casual fans who make up most of the movie-going audience. I know that fits the narrative you want, but one divisive film isn't going turn the masses off to the cultural juggernaut that is SW. If the the bad films that constitute the prequel trilogy didn't kill the franchise, TLJ definitely won't among casual fans that will be more turned off by bad filmmaking than divisiveness.

IMO, Rogue One outperformed Solo because general audiences simply found the concept more appealing -- a war film telling the story of events that lead directly into the first film. Solo was what it said it would be on the can -- a film about one particular character's backstory, and not greater events going on. While an iconic character, it's missing the iconic actor, and it's a character that young people haven't bonded with like us older, OT-centric folks. The story also isn't particularly revelatory or relevant to the current trilogy. It mostly gives us explanations for small character details that we knew about already. That's cool for the diehards, but for general audiences...meh?

You can dismiss this stuff, but when you add it all up, there are reasons to think there could be some box office softness. The film also had a very troubled production that went down to the wire, and it's important to consider that the studio likely wasn't sure exactly what they had on their hands until later in the process than normal. There was probably some fear about a JL scenario.

And when budgets hit $250 mil...good lord. You start thinking it needs to pull in a billion, and a billion dollars is a massive number, no matter how easy earlier SW and Marvel films made it look. These character one shot films should be $150 mil, tops. Completely understandable why they might have capped the marketing budget. But again, I don't think there were any issues about awareness of the movie or understanding of the concept. There were just fewer people interested.



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 Earth127 wrote:
Marvel style, but lacking in their recent quality by a lot. And if anything it's production is polar opposite to TLJ. Justice league suffered from lack of clear direction and focus at the top lvl. TLJ does not, if anyhting it suffers from a lack of such interference. Justice league has a by the numbers superhero get together macguffin plot. TLJ is anything but a committee mas marketing movie. No matter how flashy the visuals.

I would say that JL is the result of a lot of studio meddling...after they learned that people were turned off by the auteur filmmaker they had committed to and given full creative control. It was their blind faith in Snyder that put the studio in that spot, and there was really no way for them to win after the mistake had been made. Don't meddle and get savaged again like they did with BvS, or meddle and risk having it come out a mess?

Solo avoided the situation by taking the hit and making it a near complete do-over, instead of trying to fix and salvage and cobble together.

But it really doesn't make sense to pull the marketing, not to the extent that they did. Once you're in for as much as they were, you'd still want to do some pushing.

Or alternately wait to release the movie. They could have always sat on the film for 6 months.

@Gorgon:

This "diehard fan" counternarrative is totally bankrupt. None of my IRL family, friends, or acquaintances liked The Last Jedi and many (most?) of them don't care about Star Wars. Memorably, how much everyone hated TLJ was the icebreaker at a party I went to in January. I'm not saying nobody liked the film. In my experience, however, people are counting outright apathy as equivalent to liking the film and this is masking the real damage TLJ has done to the brand.

Solo made a big effort to reach out to people who closely follow the Star Wars brand, even to the point that its climactic reveal risked confusing people not as tuned in. If TLJ had united rather than divided opinion about the direction of Disney SW, this would have been a cause for celebration rather than an occasion to rethink the entire Lucasfilm strategy.

R1 is a very weak premise and I think it would have also bombed following TLJ. Leading up to Solo's release and immediately after, the media catchphrase was "the movie no one asked for" - something that applies much more to R1. R1 is worse film than Solo on every count but especially acting and writing. The one thing R1 has over Solo, and holy moly did Disney ever bank hard on this, was an excuse to trot out Darth Vader.

I completely agree that Disney overspent on Solo. I love the way the movie looks but nothing about the result justifies a $250 - $350 million price tag.

 Grey Templar wrote:
But it really doesn't make sense to pull the marketing, not to the extent that they did. Once you're in for as much as they were, you'd still want to do some pushing.

Or alternately wait to release the movie. They could have always sat on the film for 6 months.

Unless they already knew it was going to suck.

Do you mean, they knew it would fail?

Which of course, they could not have. But they could have believed it and self-fulfilled that prophecy.

The movie didn't actually suck. To the contrary, it is the best Disney SW film by far. But as we know, there is virtually no correlation between quality and box office performance above a certain budget.

 Manchu wrote:
@Gorgon:

This "diehard fan" counternarrative is totally bankrupt. None of my IRL family, friends, or acquaintances liked The Last Jedi and many (most?) of them don't care about Star Wars. Memorably, how much everyone hated TLJ was the icebreaker at a party I went to in January. I'm not saying nobody liked the film. In my experience, however, people are counting outright apathy as equivalent to liking the film and this is masking the real damage TLJ has done to the brand.
.

Agreed its wierd how people want to pretend that only "diehard fans" did not enjoy the Last Jedi.

I know a few people who quite liked it and one single person who loved it - the rest (VAST majority) thought it was gak or worse - for some it was only the second SW film they had seen.

 Manchu wrote:
Do you mean, they knew it would fail?

Which of course, they could not have. But they could have believed it and self-fulfilled that prophecy.

The movie didn't actually suck. To the contrary, it is the best Disney SW film by far. But as we know, there is virtually no correlation between quality and box office performance above a certain budget.

Yes. It could have bombed in polling and test audiences, and it became better to limit the loss. Had the marketed it heavily they would have just lost a lot more.

Who knows?

I keep waiting for one person I know IRL to say they liked TLJ. I am careful not to pre-load conversations about movies, especially ones I don't like, because I like to hear (so far as possible) unvarnished opinions - it's very instructive. For example, a girl at another party was explaining why she liked the ending of R1 (something I hated) and gave a very compelling reason: she had no idea where the movie fit into the rest of the Star Wars movies until the very end.

 Manchu wrote:
Do you mean, they knew it would fail?

Which of course, they could not have. But they could have believed it and self-fulfilled that prophecy.

The movie didn't actually suck. To the contrary, it is the best Disney SW film by far. But as we know, there is virtually no correlation between quality and box office performance above a certain budget.

When a company like Disney makes a movie like Solo they have cost to profit projections. They knew what kind of budget they wanted to spend on a side movie that ultimately added nothing. All the time since they announced solo was a thing they heard the people going cool and they also heard all the people going... what exactly is the point? What could this possibly add to the mythos of any value?

They knew if they spent x they could turn a profit of about y, which meant they had about z for marketing. When they had to reshoot 80% of it and Solo became the most expensive SW movie ever made there was no digging themselves out of their hole. All their projections said the movie would fail. But DVD/Blu Ray sales could help and it's better to have a good looking well made movie in the roster that bombed in theaters then a bad movie that is a blight. So they gave the special effects a full go and as it all ate into the marketing budget and beyond they released it to little to no fanfare because spending MORE on marketing wasn't going to suddenly make it profitable.

As explained above, this issue is not marketing dollars but rather marketing days, i.e., why the movie was released only five months after TLJ and even more closely following Black Panther and Infinity War. My sense is, there were bad comms up and down the corporate ladder, which in turn signifies trust issues.

 Manchu wrote:
I keep waiting for one person I know IRL to say they liked TLJ. I am careful not to pre-load conversations about movies, especially ones I don't like, because I like to hear (so far as possible) unvarnished opinions - it's very instructive. For example, a girl at another party was explaining why she liked the ending of R1 (something I hated) and gave a very compelling reason: she had no idea where the movie fit into the rest of the Star Wars movies until the very end.

Maybe we travel in different circles. Most of my friends and co-workers aren't big SW fans. I haven't talked to one person who's displayed anything close to the venom the movie receives online. The dislikes are more of the 'meh' variety than 'TLJ is a travesty and I'm going to outline why in great detail for you'. The biggest SW fan I know -- a guy who's gone in costume to premieres, etc. -- loves TLJ and thinks it was badly needed. *shrug*

And this idea that you have that Solo is a dramatically better movie than Rogue One isn't supported by critic reviews, Cinemascore, PostTrak, or the week-over-week box office 'legs' that you'd expect to see if audience word-of-mouth was great. You're entitled to your opinion, but there's nothing to suggest that it's an opinion most people would agree with.

Personally, I don't think it's a *bad* film, but it's nothing I'd tell people to rush out and see. It's probably more interesting to the diehards you don't think exist(?) than to general audiences.

Obviously an extended explanation of how bad TLJ was would be unusual IRL. I mean, unless you are talking about someone with very low self awareness, most people are not going to give you a detailed breakdown while you stand there. By contrast, a discussion forum is exactly the venue for that kind of, er, well, discussion.

I don't know what to make of your comment about professional critics. Professional critics raved over both R1 and TLJ. Frankly, they are demonstrably off base (even setting aside that it's a hopelessly compromised profession). Reading over these reviews, I don't see any discussion of fundamentals like characterization or plot coherence. Ron Howard's version of Solo, by contrast, demonstrates mastery over these fundamental points - points that are weak-to-absent in R1 and TLJ. We can go over this in extreme detail, if you like.

And I know there is a such thing as a diehard Star Wars fan. I was one, up to 1999. And when TFA came out, I felt that old spirit stir once more. But then we got R1, a vapid, miserable exercise in nonsense. If you can believe it, I actually was convinced TLJ would be a recovery for the franchise. Boy was I wrong!