Reason why Solo: A Star Wars Story tanked at the box office

Disney’s Star Wars remakes have all been tremendous moneymakers at the box office. Except for one.

It’s arguably the most successful franchise in history.

Disney bought Lucasfilm — the company that created Star Wars — just over six years ago for a whopping $4.05 billion.

The historic acquisition marked the beginning of a new era for the popular movies, but also heaped a significant amount of pressure on Disney.

Would they do the films justice? Should Star Wars just remain a beloved franchise of the past? Will we accept new actors?

Well, it turned out we simply couldn’t get enough of the epic space blockbusters.

The production company more than recouped its investment last year after only six years, with their four Star Wars feature films — The Force Awakens (2015), Rogue One (2016), The Last Jedi (2017) and Solo (2018) — making a combined $4.8 billion at the box office.

This is not including money Disney made from licensing agreements and merchandise sales.

And with its next film, Star Wars: Episode IX, set to be released in December, there’s no doubt Disney’s bank account will inflate by hundreds of millions yet again.

So it’s fairly safe to say they well and truly penned a good deal when they bought the rights.

However, one of the four films made significantly less money than the others. And now we’ve been given a reason why.

Solo: A Star Wars Story, released last year, only managed to reel $US392.9 million at the box office, making it the lowest-grossing Star Wars movie in history.

It also cost about $US275-300 million to make, so it really didn’t profit much at all.

If you’d like to watch and it judge for yourself, it’s available to stream on Foxtel Now.

Alden Ehrenreich stars as a young Harrison Ford in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).

In comparison, The Last Jedi made an eye-watering $US1.321 billion, while Rogue One pulled $US1.056 billion.

But it was The Force Awakens, Disney’s first Star Wars offering, that made waves, making a staggering $US2.066 billion at the box office.

You could really buy a lightsaber or two (hundred billion) with that.

There was one big difference between Solo and the other Star Wars films — and that was its release date.

Solo was released in the month May, unlike the previous three films, which were all released in December.

This is considered a peak period for retail sales and box office hits.

It was also released around the same time as two of Disney’s big flicks, Avengers: Infinity War and The Incredibles 2, which lessened its hype.

Emilia Clarke was considered the saving grace of the film.

Another fatal blow was Solo hit theatres a week before the hugely anticipated Deadpool 2, starring Ryan Reynolds.

There’s no way of guaranteeing whether pushing back its release date would have made it a success, as unfortunately the movie itself garnered pretty average reviews.

It follows the early years one of the franchise’s favourite characters, Han Solo, who was of course made famous by Harrison Ford.

The prequel is a love story. Or rather, a story of heartbreak. But the theme is really about Han Solo’s rise from a rocky childhood.

Starring Alden Ehrenreich and Emilia Clarke, it had the makings to be a success but unfortunately didn’t quite reach the highs of its predecessors.

Analytics company Comscore’s senior analyst Paul Dergarabedian told CNBC that Disney would not have a hard time recovering from the setback.

“Perhaps it was better to get the movie out there and just weather the storm of reviews. “Disney is so big and so successful that they can weather this and move on.”

Here’s hoping Disney have saved the best for it’s next offering with Star Wars: Episode IX.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Solo: A Star Wars Story are available to stream on Foxtel Now.