New Star Wars Movie Solo Has Worst Opening Weekend In Recent Franchise History By Far

The newest Star Wars movie, Solo, opened this weekend--but it was not the hit that Disney and Lucasfilm would have wanted. The movie is tracking to make around $101 million in the US and Canada over this Memorial Day long weekend, according to Entertainment Weekly. That would put the film easily in the top spot, but it's well below what projections said it might make. Industry watchers said the film was expected to pull in between $130 million and $150 million for its opening.

Solo made an estimated $83.3 million in the Friday-Sunday period, which gives it the worst three-day opening weekend box office figure of any of the new Star Wars films by a very, very large margin. Here are the three-day domestic opening-weekend figures for the three previous new era Star Wars films.

1. The Force Awakens ($248 million)
2. Rogue One ($155.1 million)
3. The Last Jedi ($220 million

Solo made around $65 million in the Friday-Sunday window from international markets--including China--which is not the greatest.

The record-holder for the four-day Memorial Day weekend is 2007's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which made $139.8 million. Solo was projected to potentially dethrone that movie, but it came nowhere close to doing that.

Being a spinoff movie, Solo was never going to be able to make as much as The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi. But the comparisons to Rogue One are noteworthy, given that was a spinoff as well and it did considerably better.

According to EW, which supplied all of the box office figures, Solo cost around $250 million to produce. The budget likely incurred an extra cost beyond normal, as Disney fired directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord just 11 months before the movie came out. Oscar winner Ron Howard was later brought on to take over.

Solo is the first of the new Star Wars movies to not open in December, and it comes just five months after the release of The Last Jedi in December 2017.

Despite Solo's slow start, Disney is of course moving forward on more Star Wars movies. The next one is Episode IX in December 2019, while Disney is also reportedly planning standalone films for Obi-Wan Kenobi, Lando Calrissian, and Boba Fett. Just recently, we learned that Logan director James Mangold may be directing the Boba Fett movie. Additionally, Disney hired the creators of Game of Thrones for a new Star Wars film series, while The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson is making his own new trilogy of saga films after JJ Abrams' Episode IX next year.

Below you can see the full Top 10 box office report for the May 25-27 period in the US and Canada, as relayed by EW.

1. Solo: A Star Wars Story — $83.3 million ($101 million four-day)
2. Deadpool 2 — $42.7 million ($53.5 million four-day)
3. Avengers: Infinity War — $16.5 million ($20.1 million four-day)
4. Book Club — $9.5 million ($12 million four-day)
5. Life of the Party — $5.1 million ($6.5 million four-day)
6. Breaking In — $4.1 million
7. Show Dogs — $3.1 million
8. Overboard — $3 million
9. A Quiet Place — $2.2 million
10. RBG — $1.2 million