Ron Howard points to trolling as a reason for Solo’s poor box office results

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

One year ago, Lucasfilm and Disney were staring down the barrel of something they never thought they would have to confront: A Star Wars movie that would lose them money. The prequel adventure, SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY, opened to solid numbers by blockbuster standards but well below expectations for a Star Wars movie, leading many to start pointing fingers as to who was to blame. Now as the movie passes its first birthday director Ron Howard opens up about the reception, and when it comes to the disappointing numbers, says the trolling the movie received certainly didn’t help matters.

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The director was speaking with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via CinemaBlend) about his new Pavarotti documentary when the topic of SOLO came up. Howard said that while the movie had the biggest opening of his own career the results were a bit disappointing. He posits several reasons for why this was, one being that maybe it didn’t quite live up to the must-see aspects of the other movies.

I feel very good about the way it turned out. I love the way it played to audiences, which I witnessed and was a part of. So all of that I'm able to feel good about. Sure, I wish it would've done [better] and lived up to the box office and so forth, so that's disappointing. Why? Maybe it's the release. Maybe it's the idea that it's sort of too nostalgic, going back and revisiting an origin story for a beloved character may not be what the fans were looking for. It kind of seemed to me, looking at it, the opening — which was big, not as big as the others, it was probably my biggest opening, personally, it was still disappointing to them — I think those are the hardcore fans. It sort of tells you how many people are tagalongs who need to wait to see what people think and whether it's essential, if it's a zeitgeist movie or not, and whether it's just 'I love Star Wars and I want to see what's next.'

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Whether some of those reasons did contribute to the movies less-than-expected box office or not, Howard is pretty confident that the harassment the movie faced from the online community didn’t help matters at all.

So whatever millions [Solo] made worldwide, those were the core fans, but it didn't hit that zeitgeist point, for whatever reason. Timing, young Han Solo, pushback from the previous movie, which I kept hearing was maybe something. And some trolling, definitely some trolling. Some actual aggressive… It was pretty interesting. Not so much, a little bit the Twitter feed, yes, but it was especially noticeable prior to the release of the movie. Several of the algorithms, whether it was Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes, there was an inordinate push down on the 'want to see' and on the fan voting. And when you look at it, it's like 3, 4, 5 — or whatever the rating is, I forget what the rating is on Rotten Tomatoes, whether it's a scale of 1-5 or 1-10 — but pretty high, and then a series of 0s or .5s or 1s.

Perhaps said trolling was from those who were still hating on THE LAST JEDI, or those who just didn’t like a new actor playing Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich), but either way, there were indeed folks going after the movie before it even came out. The result was an opening weekend of $84 million – which came off projections of almost twice that – finishing with $213 million domestically and $392 million worldwide. For reference, the other Star Wars prequel, ROGUE ONE, made $290 million worldwide its opening weekend and finished with over $1 billion around the world by the end of its run.

At the end of the day, there was a tornado of reasons that contributed to the movie not doing so hot at the box office. There were the widely-reported production issues, the recasting of such an iconic character for seemingly little reason, the summer release date (SW has recently dominated in December), the general so-so response to the overall movie and, yes, some serious online trolling. Howard hit the nail on the head saying that it ultimately didn’t become part of the zeitgeist like the others, meaning that casual viewers just didn’t care enough to see it, leaving it all to the core fans. But, no matter the result, thousands of the movie's fans want more, and a fan petition has gone out requesting a follow-up movie or streaming series. Can a sequel defy box office results and make its way to audiences? Spoiler alert: Probably not.

The next Star Wars movie, STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, is in theaters December 20.