Lucasfilm finds itself in the awkward position of having to explain away a Star Wars movie's failure, something that has never had to be done before. Solo: A Star Wars Story is only at the $350M mark worldwide, a number we'd expect it to have domestically by now, and at this rate it will be lucky to break $400M overall. It didn't get better when a rumor surfaced that Lucasfilm had put "on hold" its spinoff films, which led to a rarely-seen denial of the story. So what exactly is the truth? As usual in these cases, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
THR reached out to their sources at Lucasfilm, and they say the spinoffs "haven't slowed down", but that the studio is "licking their wounds" over Solo's poor performance. That should be good news for fans eager to see a Boba Fett or Obi-Wan Kenobi movie, both of which cotninue to be in development, albeit on different tracks.
Another insider adds, “It doesn’t mean those spinoffs don’t happen. It just means they’re trying to figure out how to make, and market, them differently.”
Let's be clear here; Solo wasn't just hurt because people don't want to see a Han Solo movie. It had a mountain of bad buzz to cope with that lasted for months because of all the production troubles, director swaps, and more. I believe if things had run smoothly the film would have done much better. Audience confidence is always key.
“In light of the reaction to ‘Last Jedi’ and the performance of Solo, they are now just going to look at what’s coming in and seeing how good it is, before dating anything,” another insider noted. “It’s all pretty understandable.”
The status of the Boba Fett and Obi-Wan movies is interesting, though. The latter, which had Stephen Daldry in talks to direct, is unclear and nobody seems to want to comment on it right now. Ewan McGregor does appear willing to reprise his role from the prequel films, but who knows if he'll even be asked? He's going to be busy for a while starring in The Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep.
As for Boba Fett, it's still moving forward with James Mangold directing and co-writing the script with Simon Kinberg. However, that's far off in the distance because Mangold has his Ferrari biopic coming up first. And in the meantime, it's looking like the Boba Fett movie is going to undergo significant changes to "reconfigure" it...
Sources say that after the underperformance of Solo, the project could now be reconfigured. The thinking is that if Han Solo, one of the most iconic characters in the Star Wars universe, couldn’t sustain a big-budget origin feature, then any Fett movie would have to be scaled down, since though the character is popular, he’s certainly less well-known to most moviegoers than the Corellian smuggler.
That sounds like a downsizing in budget, and thus a story is that a bit smaller in scope. I have an idea; why not just combine the Obi-Wan and Boba Fett movies? We already know from the prequels that their stories intersect, so come up with something that brings them together in a way that makes sense? We really don't need multiple A Star Wars Story films at this point. One every few years is more than enough.
So what's official right now? The films you probably already guessed are still on the docket: Star Wars Episode 9 is next, followed by a disconnected trilogy from Rian Johnson and a series the creators of Game of Thrones.
