In 2018, for the first time since Disney took over the reins from creator George Lucas, the burgeoning entertainment monopoly released a Star Wars movie outside of December. After hitting Lucas off with a $4 billion payout in 2012, the company that Mickey built immediately set to work on a new era of Star Wars. They even boldly announced that they'd roll out a new film every year for the foreseeable future.
Their first offering, The Force Awakens, was released in mid-December of 2015 -- a time of year usually populated by dramatic Oscar-bait, not big-budget action extravaganzas. But the unusual scheduling worked. TFA didn't snag any Oscars (though it did receive five nominations) but it did rack up huge box office sales. The movie was pretty much guaranteed to be a hit but nobody could've expected that it would gross over $2 billion. And Disney execs justifiably stuck with the formula. The following year, Disney's first Star Wars prequel, Rogue One, was released on December 16 and went on to gross over $1.3 billion. Though divisive, the next installment, The Last Jedi, was released on December 15, 2017 and rang up $1 billion as well.
But then the Disney suits decided to fix what wasn't broken at all from a revenue standpoint. Instead of waiting for December, the next prequel, Solo, debuted on May 25, 2018, roughly five months after TLJ's release and in the wake of that film's still-fresh negative publicity. While pre-sale numbers looked promising, Solo ended its theatrical run having grossed less than $393 million. Because of its $275 million budget, Solo will go down in history as the first (and so far, only) Star Wars movie to lose money (studios have to split their films' grosses with theaters). And while each of its predecessors landed in one of the top two spots on the list of the highest-grossing movies in their respective years of release, Solo won't even be among the top 10 highest-grossing movies released in 2018. In fact, the film will be lucky to maintain its hold on the 23rd spot.
What's more, the movie that Disney did see fit to place in the mid-December 2018 slot, Mary Poppins Returns, has so far made even less money than Solo. MPR's theatrical run isn't over and it is showing a small profit (its budget was smaller than Solo's) but the other big December releases (Into the Spider-Verse, Aquaman and Bumblebee), all from other studios, have all outgrossed Poppins. And Spider-Verse features the fourth big-screen version of Spider-Man in a decade-and-a-half (Ironically, Into the Spider-Verse was produced by Solo's original directors, who were fired before its completion). And Bumblebee is the first Transformers film following the franchise's worst received release. And Aquaman, which did gross over $1 billion, is the first movie devoted to perhaps the most-ridiculed superhero of all time.
The thinking was likely: "Star Wars is guaranteed to hit. We can release it anytime and it'll bring in a billion. Let's slip something else in that December date and keep dominating at the end of the year."
Sometimes it's better to stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to.
As a result, Disney's gamble bait-and-switch and jetissoning of a tried-and-true method yielded two disappointments instead of two smash hits and paved the way for three competitors to shine when they otherwise may not have.
Originally Posted 1/25/19
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