By
Brittany Allen on
Thursday June 21, 2018 02:25 pm
Plans for future films in the Star Wars Anthology may now be far, far away. The most recent spin-off film of the Star Wars Franchise,
Solo: A Star Wars Story, fell short. Released at the end of May, the second film in the Star Wars Anthology Series didn’t even make half of their $250 million dollar reported budget going into the third week of release. Grossing $196.2 million domestically as of date, it’s clear
Solo didn’t rise to the same success of other films in the Star Wars franchise.
Anthology Series
In 2015, shortly after the
Rogue One project was announced as a standalone film, Lucasfilms officially announced a collective of spinoff films would form the Star Wars Anthology Series. Lucasfilm’s president, Kathleen Kennedy, states Lucas “was really interested in exploring all the stories that existed inside the universe.”
Meanwhile, Disney CEO Bon Iger announced long-term planning for the Star Wars franchise. By the end of 2016, before
Rogue One was released, writers were hired to develop a second and third stand-alone anthology film. In fact, the second film was given a May 2018 release date back in 2015.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story released in December 2016 and topped box office charts.
Rogue One was Star Wars third film to earn over one billion dollars. With production costs hitting $200M, profit from this spinoff was astounding. With IMDb showing a 7.8/10 rating, it’s safe to say
Rogue One was a success.
A few things could play into
Solo’s lukewarm reception at the box office. A May release date placed
Solo in competition with several summer blockbusters such as
Avengers: Infinity War and
Deadpool 2. IMDb has
Solo at a 7.2/10 rating, but at only 99,000 reviews (compared to
Rogue One’s 430,000) it may be too early to determine the overall reception of the
Solo film.
For now, plans for the Obi-Wan focused third spin off film in the Star Wars Anthology have been put on hold. Lucasfilm’s next film is the 2019 release of
Episode IX, the last part of
The Force Awakens Star Wars trilogy.
Comment below with your opinion on
Solo: A Star Wars Story!
