Once the weekend is over, and the box office receipts have been counted, Solo: A Star Wars Story‘s domestic tally ought to be north of $170M.
At least, that’s according to The Hollywood Reporter, whose weekend forecast reveals that May’s biggest tentpoles (read: Solo and Deadpool 2) are expected to rule over a relatively quite post-Memorial Day weekend, during which time Solo: A Star Wars Story is projected to earn another $60M across North America. And the Merc with a Mouth? An additional $20M, meaning the David Leitch-directed sequel is well on its way to a $600M worldwide gross.
On the Star Wars lot, it’s fair to say that Han’s solo flight has failed to light up the box office in the way Disney would have hoped. Granted, the Anthology pic was never expected to post the same numbers as, say, The Last Jedi, but even Rogue One was able to score a bigger debut two years ago.
That largely comes down to the fact that Rogue One, a self-contained adventure spun out from A New Hope‘s opening crawl, opened big in December, when most of the schools were still off for Christmas.
Solo: A Star Wars Story, on the other hand, dropped during the midst of blockbuster season, and faced stiff competition from both Deadpool 2 and Avengers: Infinity War. A $60M-plus second weekend is by no means a disaster, it’s just a lot smaller than people have come to expect from this new age of Star Wars movies. So perhaps we’re guilty of holding Solo to a higher (read: unfair) standard? You can chime in with your own thoughts, comments and predictions down below.