Posted on 06/05/2019 8:31:45 AM PDT by EdnaMode
Ron Howard has said that online trolls were partly to blame for the lacklustre box office performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who is currently promoting upcoming documentary Pavarotti, told the Happy Sad Confused podcast that “aggressive trolling” was a crucial factor in the film’s financial under-performance but that he still greatly enjoyed the creative experience of making the film.
“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…I didn’t take it pers
Solo: A Star Wars Story mustered $393M at the global box office off an estimated $275M budget. Released last May, the film arrived only six months after The Last Jedi. Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalker, due for a December release this year, will be the fifth Star Wars universe film released since 2015. Meanwhile, web series The Mandalorian is set for a November release. Previous Star Wars spinoff Rogue One took more than $1BN in 2016.
Rotten Tomatoes has subsequently adjusted its audience participation parameters after a torrent of negative comments for Captain Marvel, prior to the film’s release.
During the audio interview, Howard also discussed the growing power of TV and questioned whether some of his previous movies – including multi-Oscar winner A Beautiful Mind — would have been made for the big screen today. Howard said he now watches more TV series than films.
Among the projects in early stages at his Imagine Entertainment is a series version of his fantasy feature Willow, which is being discussed for Disney’s upcoming VOD platform Disney +. Howard confirmed that the series is being imagined as a “continuation not a reboot”, that he hopes to direct some of the series and that he hopes Willow star Warwick Davis will return for it. Jon Kasdan, co-writer on Solo: A Star Wars Story, is another driving force behind the project’s script. “Jon has an inspired take on it,” Howard said. “There are some really serious discussions going on about it.”
The filmmaker also disclosed that he is developing an animated musical movie and is in development on several musical adaptations of films he has previously directed for Imagine.
Next up for Howard is Netflix movie Hillbilly Elegy, which will star Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Haley Bennett and Gabriel Basso.
I liked Rogue One.
In fact, my new favorite trilogy is:
1. Whatever The Third Movie Is Called (For a setup and some cool lightsaber work, if nothing more. And, whenever that no-talent idiot who plays Anakin is onscreen, you can hit Mute and make up your own lines. Fun for the entire family.)
2. Rogue One
3. Star Wars
Darth Vader in "Rogue One" is a genuinely horrible, no-good, really awful bad guy. Makes him look positively lovable in Star Wars, Empire, and The Ewok Movie.
They really should have stopped after the third star wars movie.
Hollywood = remake, remake, remake, remake.
A total joke.
I am sure, Mr. Howard, that it certainly had nothing to do with movie simply being CRAP!
They lost money. The studio splits the box office with the theaters, so they only saw half of that. Most overseas theaters take more than half. Rule of thumb is post production marketing is roughly 1/2 of production budget. For a movie to break even, it has to produce 2X the production budget.
Fully agreed with you (well, I’ll admit that TLJ was slightly better than The Force Awakens, but that’s only because TLJ at least didn’t outright remake TESB in all but name, while TFA did exactly that with ANH.).
However, Kennedy wasn’t responsible for Star Wars needlessly adopting grays, or even Iger. The man who deserves to be blamed for that is none other than its creator George Lucas. The prequel trilogy and Jedi certainly hinted at a morally relativistic view with how Obi-Wan basically said that truth literally depended on points of view (it doesn’t. It’s absolute and non-changing), and was treated as good (that, and also the implication that arose that Obi-Wan misled Luke specifically to manipulate him into committing patricide, and treating that as good, or at least preferable to Luke turning to the dark side), not to mention Obi-Wan going full-on nihilist by saying “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” Heck, even A New Hope had grays with Leia implicitly condemning an implied innocent planet after leaving it to hold the bag just to avoid her home planet being blown up, not to mention Obi-Wan robbing a Stormtrooper of his free will, and it never being addressed even there that there were any negatives to that sort of element. If it were truly clearly defined, those aspects would NOT have happened.
If that’s not enough, George Lucas outright says as much with the Chosen One prophecy being to literally “bring balance” between light and dark elements, not eliminate the dark as earlier led to believe. In fact, the Clone Wars cartoon reinforces that bit, with even George Lucas stating as much based on this blueskying/commentary here: https://youtu.be/68dvgRT3Kx8 Also this interview here: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-jan-20-ca-hart20-story.html
Besides, I’m pretty sure Lucas basing the Rebels on the Vietcong and the Empire on America not just from his own admission, but also the 1973 story treatment notes penned by Lucas himself would show that Lucas has a downright TERRIBLE understanding of morality.
As far as Solo, yeah, I wasn’t fond of them deciding to make him pansexual out of the blue. He was never that. He was a flirt to the ladies, and wasn’t into any abberant behavior other than maybe being too much of a flirt. They might as well turn Han Solo gay while we’re at it (I’m being sarcastic, obviously). And quite frankly, that was the same mistake Bill Condon made when he “outed” LeFou during development for Beauty and the Beast. Still, was nice that Solo included a long-discarded concept from A New Hope in the form of the Arrestor Cruiser. Never saw the film though (and believe it or not, The Last Jedi being a stinker didn’t even have anything to do with my decision, as I already vowed not to see any more Star Wars movies made by Disney before The Last Jedi was even formally announced thanks to the LeFou debacle that Bill Condon unleashed).
Yeah, no kidding, and it also didn’t help that he unintentionally made a case for the Empire when he during Cannes 2005 effectively implied that Robespierre’s France was a basis for the Old Republic and that Robespierre’s France was a good thing, at least better than either King Louis XVI’s France or Napoleonic France. He lost me there.
It says a lot when Palpatine, the main villain, was practically the only GOOD thing about the Prequels and to a lesser extent Jedi (the latter also had the rescue operation on Tatooine, and Lucas had minimal, if any involvement in that scene being shot).
When it's your movie, it can be hard to see things objectively.
The movie wasn't bad. But it wasn't great either.
Ritchie had too much of himself invested in the picture to realize that.
too stupid to predict how a movie will do.
Of course it’s the internet trolls, couldn’t be anything like maybe the movie sucked that led to lower than expected box office. ;-)
105 vs 100 is a 5% return - I do that all the time on investments. MO, ATT are providing ~ a 5% dividend with a negative moment on stock prices over that past year or so. I still get my 5%.
So yes I would consider it. It’s not going to blow anyone out of the water, but it still isn’t a bad investment.
If you want to tie up $100M for a 5% return you go for it...
Me I’ll get 10%+ on that kind of capital without breaking a sweat.
again my point was they were whining about how bad the movie was when they made a profit. I get your point, I just think sometimes when things don’t work 100% they way people want they complain just because they got the 5 vs 10.
That’s because you are thinking wrong.
If you know you can get 10-15% on your money and aren’t upset you only got 5%, then passive investing is your meal ticket.
That spread you left on the table would be 5-10 Million...
5% return on that kind of capital, is sad indeed. Hell even the most boring and established manufacturing generally has a 7% margin.
Word of mouth that the movie wasn’t very good = “Aggressive trolling”? STFU, Opie.
Sounds better than The Last Jedi.
I liked it and felt like SW.
Nothing makes me happier than seeing Rocket Man bombing. People are uncomfortable watching fag sex in a movie.
Yep. Saw it 8 times when I was 12. Truth, Justice and the American Way. So much has changed in such a relatively short time.
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