If you didn't watch Solo: A Star Wars Story, you're not the only one. By Star Wars standards, it was a total flop — something that director Ron Howard is now blaming on trolls.
Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Howard laid blame for Solo's box office failure on "aggressive trolling," among other things.
"I wish it could have lived up to the box office expectations," Howard said. "That's disappointing. Why didn't it? Maybe that's the release [date], maybe it was too nostalgic, maybe pushback from the previous movie... some trolling, definitely.
"It was especially noticeable in several algorithms such as Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. There was an inordinate push down on the 'Want to see' [score on Rotten Tomatoes] and on the fan voting. There was a series of 0s and 1s on there."
Released last May, Solo: A Star Wars Story brought in only $393 million USD at the global box office and had an estimated $275 million budget. It also marked the fifth Star Wars movie to arrive since 2015 and came only six months after Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
To give you some box office comparison, the other Star Wars spinoff Rogue One earned $1 billion at the global box office in 2016. That's more than double what Solo brought in.
Despite the poor dollar numbers, Howard said, "I didn't take it personally."
Disney, on the other hand, might have. After all, it has since shelved various other Star Wars spinoff films, as well as announced "a bit of a hiatus" earlier this year.
And if Disney isn't careful, it could have another Solo on its hands with the upcoming film helmed by Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, whose Star Wars project has already been targeted by a petition called "Don't Ruin Star Wars With GOT Showrunners!"
Before we get to that, though, we'll get Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker, which is being directed by J.J. Abrams and will hit theatres on December 20.
Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Howard laid blame for Solo's box office failure on "aggressive trolling," among other things.
"I wish it could have lived up to the box office expectations," Howard said. "That's disappointing. Why didn't it? Maybe that's the release [date], maybe it was too nostalgic, maybe pushback from the previous movie... some trolling, definitely.
"It was especially noticeable in several algorithms such as Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. There was an inordinate push down on the 'Want to see' [score on Rotten Tomatoes] and on the fan voting. There was a series of 0s and 1s on there."
Released last May, Solo: A Star Wars Story brought in only $393 million USD at the global box office and had an estimated $275 million budget. It also marked the fifth Star Wars movie to arrive since 2015 and came only six months after Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
To give you some box office comparison, the other Star Wars spinoff Rogue One earned $1 billion at the global box office in 2016. That's more than double what Solo brought in.
Despite the poor dollar numbers, Howard said, "I didn't take it personally."
Disney, on the other hand, might have. After all, it has since shelved various other Star Wars spinoff films, as well as announced "a bit of a hiatus" earlier this year.
And if Disney isn't careful, it could have another Solo on its hands with the upcoming film helmed by Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, whose Star Wars project has already been targeted by a petition called "Don't Ruin Star Wars With GOT Showrunners!"
Before we get to that, though, we'll get Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker, which is being directed by J.J. Abrams and will hit theatres on December 20.
