Despite a nearly $400 million global box office haul,
Solo: A Star Wars Story was viewed as a disappointment by the House of Mouse. With a 70 percent score
on Rotten Tomatoes, the critical consensus was that
Solo was a "flawed yet fun fast-paced space adventure."
So why didn't the film perform better at the box office? Could it have had something to do with the timing of when it was released?
Taking to Twitter, Jon Kasdan, who co-wrote the screenplay for
Solo with his father Lawrence Kasdan, questioned how the film might've performed if it had released in December.
The Force Awakens,
The Last Jedi, and even
Rogue One all released in the December holiday window - a time when Disney usually dominates the box office thanks, in part, to the extended winter break.
Solo bucked the trend, releasing in May, just a few months after Rian Johnson's controversial
Episode VIII: The Last Jedi.
Although
The Last Jedi did earn over $1.3 billion worldwide, it was noticeably down from the $2 billion generated from
The Force Awakens. Johnson's film had a mixed response from fans and it's fair to question if the salty taste it left in their mouth had an impact on the performance of
Solo. Waiting until December would've given fans a chance to reset themselves and for Lucasfilm to avoid potential franchise fatigue.
We'll never know for certain if it would've performed better, but Kasdan isn't the only one with those thoughts as Disney's CEO Bob Iger even admitted that they did “too much, too fast" with the
Star Wars franchise. Perhaps Kasdan is onto something when he wonders if waiting until December would've been the right move to allow for more breathing room in between movies.