I am still surprised that a Star Wars movie could lose money

Solo a Star Wars story lost money at the box office. I find that hard to believe. Star Wars is thought to be one of the most popular franchises in the world. There are four possible reasons why I think this happened.

Reason one, it came out too soon after the Last Jedi and also at a bad time of year. Maybe it would have benefited from coming out later in the year. That would have given the studio more time to advertise the film (there was a not of advertisement for the movie because of the Last Jedi). Also average movie goers in the US go to 5 movies a year and early 2019 had hits like Avengers Infinity War, Black Panther, and Deadpool.

Reason two is some people were burned out on Star Wars after the Last Jedi. A vocal part of the audience was not happy with the Last Jedi. How many people that really was is hard to know. (This audience dissatisfaction did not seem to hurt home video sales of the Last Jedi.)

Reason three is maybe people loved Harrison Ford as Han Solo and really weren’t interested in seeing someone else play Han Solo. I guess it might be hard to know that because Harrison Ford has always played the character before Solo.

Reason Four is the budget exploded after the original directors were fired and replaced by Ron Howard.  The estimate is that Howard reshot 70 percent of the film. I am not sure what the film’s original budget was but I heard the budget for the film ended up being somewhere between 270 and 300 million.  If the budget had been under 200 million, maybe the film would been a hit or would have least broken even.


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