Coming off a record-breaking run for "Avengers: Infinity War" and the unexpected global blockbuster success of "Black Panther," Walt Disney Co.'s appetite for box office attention hasn’t waned in the least.
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This time, the company will turn to its Lucasfilm label to drum up some high-earning sequel action over the Memorial Day weekend. The company will drop "Solo: A Star Wars Story" in a May 25 domestic wide release, and as usual, forecasts are solidly in the nine-figure range. BoxOffice.com expects the new Star Wars installment to drum up $133 million in its four-day opening weekend. Variety gives that idea some upside with a range of $130 million to $150 million. Deadline Hollywood goes even bigger with a forecast range of $135 million to $170 million.
The high end of those expectations would push "Solo" over the $139.8 million domestic Memorial Day weekend record set by "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" in 2007. That was also a Disney movie, but the company's success over this holiday has not always been a sure bet. Titles like "Alice Through the Looking Glass" and "Tomorrowland" turned out to be Memorial Day duds, Deadline points out.
But "Solo's" record forecasts leading into the weekend are still down from prior expectations, BoxOffice.com says. The title, while a hot film with some hot actors in a hot franchise, carries some headwinds compared to prior Star Wars releases. Star Wars fans have been increasingly disconsolate about the newest run of sequels and prequels, and a grassroots voting campaign has helped weigh the film’s Rotten Tomatoes audience score down to a lackluster 54% positive out of more than 15,000 votes, as of 12:16 p.m. ET, May 25. Further, critics may be getting less patient with the nostalgic novelty of the franchise, with "Solo" carrying one of the lowest Rotten Tomatoes scores for the recent franchise installments, at 70% "fresh." Of the Star Wars films released since 2015, "Rogue One" has the next lowest score at 85% "Certified Fresh."
"Solo" is dropping just a few months after "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" light-sabered its way to $1.39 billion in total revenue starting in December 2017, and with "Black Panther" and "Infinity War" keeping the big-budget sci-fi action genre alive and well since then, the film's performance could also be impacted by some familiarity fatigue.
But still, if opening projections are accurate, with Deadline calling for a worldwide Memorial Day weekend gross as high as $340 million, and if the film's budget is in line with other Star Wars titles, the Force should still be strong with this one. A list of comparisons compiled by Kagan, a media research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence, includes the recent Star Wars films as well as Episodes II and III from the early 2000s. Those films averaged a budget of $176.7 million and saw an average total revenue of $1.41 billion. After accounting for other marketing and distribution expenses, that produced a hefty average profit margin of 56.4%.
No other wide releases will challenge the Jedi’s sidekick at the box office, and "Deadpool 2" is expected to collect the second-highest weekend gross at $66 million, according to BoxOffice.com. That title opened to a slightly lower-than-expected $125 million in the prior weekend, making it the second-highest R-rated opening ever after the original "Deadpool," Deadline reports.

