Solo headed for soft Star Wars opening with $110-115 million 4-day estimate

May 26th 2018, 1:27pm

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

The force is only sort of with SOLO this weekend.

After early projections for recent Star Wars spinoff SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY began to fall in the last week or two, it looks like the origin story could end up with a disappointing (by Star Wars standards) $90 million for the weekend, and $110-115 million for the four-day Memorial Day frame.

This comes after a $35 million Friday, including the $14 million from Thursday night showings. The movie was expected to easily take the Memorial Day crown away from PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END ($139 million) only a few weeks ago, but it will likely end with as low as the sixth-best in the frame after PIRATES, INDIANA JONES 4 ($126 million), X-MEN: THE LAST STAND ($122 million), FAST & FURIOUS 6 ($117 million) and X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST ($110 million).

The first projections for the latest Star Wars film from Lucasfilm and Disney were at about $150-170 million during its first four-day weekend, gunning for one of the best May weekends ever. But, as the weeks went on that number started to fall as fans proved to be less excited for this movie as past outings. Perhaps this could be the result of lukewarm reviews, as the movie stands with 71% on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest score since ATTACK OF THE CLONES in 2002.

Now, the movie’s take is not exactly chump change, and SOLO may sport some legs as many fans are leaving theaters with a positive response to the movie. The movie has an A- Cinemascore, and though the Rotten Tomatoes audience scores are low we can probably attribute that to anti-Disney trolls, as they did for THE LAST JEDI some months ago. That and the movie looks good going into future weekends as there’s not a ton of competition until INCREDIBLES 2 on June 15.

As well, SOLO did have some leftover competition at the box office with DEADPOOL 2 aiming for a solid $55-60 million second weekend (for the four-day frame) and AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR also making money with around $20-25 million.

SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY is in theaters now.