Hating Star Wars has become the new loving Star Wars, whether that’s whining about how the new films have had too many girls in them or whining about how the new films have had too many non-white people in them or whining about how the new films have been not terrifically good.
And that’s possibly because true Star Wars fans are on the internet complaining about stuff instead of watching The Empire Strikes Back again and going “What’s with that weird read of ‘Our first CATCH of the day?’ Why is Han cornering Leia when she’s very clearly saying no to his advances? ‘Strong enough to pull the ears off a gundark?’ Have I been wrong all these years?“
Except for Lobot. Dude LIGHTS UP THE SCREEN.
Anyway, the (ahem) Luke-warm reaction to the most recent Star Wars film Solo: A Star Wars Story has reportedly put the kibosh on any future entries in the spin-off series, at least for the time being. Good work, cinema-goers.
While they were never officially announced it was widely reported that at least two more classic character spinoffs were in early development – Stephen Daldry’s Obi-Wan film, and the Boba Fett film James Mangold was set to direct.
And it was going to be a musical and everything!
Both have reportedly been put on indefinite hold while the Star Wars creative team ponder how best to proceed – which, it would appear, is to concentrate on next year’s Episode IX and the development of the trilogy being planned by Rian Johnson.
In fact, it turns out that Solo was the first ever Star Wars film to lose money – although that wasn’t entirely its fault. Sure, box office was down but the film’s cost ($250 million) was largely because production was shut down with original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller before being restarted with Ron Howard at the helm.
Even so, it pulled in less than a third of Rogue One‘s billion dollars worldwide, meaning it didn’t even cover costs.
So maybe don’t bank on Solo’s obviously telegraphed sequel either.
