Big shake-ups are happening in the galaxy far, far away, as longtime Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down from her position after shepherding the Star Wars franchise for the past 13 years. To say that Kennedy’s time as the head of Lucasfilm was tumultuous would be an understatement; the Academy Award-nominated producer came onboard just as Walt Disney Studios acquired the rights to the intergalactic franchise and was tasked with relaunching the series in the wake of George Lucas’ departure. While there were shining successes during her tenure, there were also colossal missteps. One of the biggest commercial failures that Kennedy was involved with at Lucasfilm was undoubtedly the 2018 film, Solo: A Star Wars Story. The spinoff prequel underperformed at the box office in a big way, bringing in just under $400 million worldwide against a $275 million budget and becoming the first Star Wars movie to not recoup its production expenses. During a recent exit interview, Kennedy reiterated her own thoughts on why.
"I brought [screenwriter] Larry Kasdan in on, and we were so excited about that idea. And then when you're into something and you realize fundamentally, conceptually, you cannot replace Han Solo, at least right now… As wonderful as Alden Ehrenreich was, and he really was good, and is a wonderful actor, we put him in an impossible situation. And once you're in it and once you're committed, you've got to carry on. I think I have a bit of regret about that, but not about the moviemaking and filmmaking. I don't have regrets about that. I just think that conceptually, we did it too soon."
Here’s the thing though; in my opinion, Kennedy is dead-wrong about this. When you pair this assessment of Solo’s failings with the franchise’s more recent reliance on de-aging and AI technology to reanimate classic versions of legacy characters, and Kennedy’s own admission that she’s “really interested” in exploring AI filmmaking, a stark picture comes into view.
Why did Solo: A Star Wars Story fail at the box office?
The idea that the reason Solo underperformed at the box office was because audiences weren’t ready for a different actor to play Han Solo is ridiculous. After all, Lucas himself had recast new actors as younger versions of legacy characters nearly two decades prior with his prequel trilogy, and that didn’t stop those films from becoming box office juggernauts. Rather, Solo’s disappointment was actually an indictment of Kennedy and Disney’s own life-sucking release schedule.
When Disney began releasing new Star Wars films in 2015, it was eager to recoup its four-billion-dollar expenditure of buying Lucasfilm a few years prior, and set ambitious plans to not only release new mainline installments of the Skywalker Saga every two years (one year faster than had ever been done before) but also release ‘anthology installments’ on the in-between years. This meant that their initial plan was to have a new Star Wars film in theaters every single year. This strategy was flawed from the get-go, but the bill only really came due by the time of Solo’s release in 2018.
In December of 2015, The Force Awakens was a gargantuan hit, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of all time. In December of 2016, Rogue One was a huge hit, though not as huge, simply by virtue of being more Star Wars. People were still riding high off of Star Wars being back after a ten year hiatus; anything would’ve hit it big at this time. Then, in December of 2017, The Last Jedi was released and was massive as well, thanks in large part to how invested audiences were in the new characters created in Force Awakens and the promise of Luke Skywalker’s full-blown return.
Then, in May of 2018, just five months after The Last Jedi had released, Solo hit theaters. Coming so soon on the heels of the previous Star Wars film, not in the December window that Lucasfilm and Disney had conditioned audiences to anticipate, and in the midst of monumental other blockbusters like Avengers: Infinity War, Solo was setup for failure from the start. In tandem with this, its marketing was terrible, and the buzz surrounding it was persistently negative due to the highly-publicized troubled production, which saw the film change directors mid-way through shooting.
All of this to say, there is a laundry list of reasons why Solo didn’t connect with audiences in the same way other films did, but it wasn’t because audiences simply couldn’t fathom Alden Ehrenreich playing Han Solo. In the years since then, Kennedy and Lucasfilm have become petrified of shaking up anything having to do with legacy characters, and that’s a massive mistake. Ehrenreich gave a great performance as the beloved smuggler, and could have helped pave a path forward that honored the legacy of the franchise while still telling new stories with these established characters in a new way.
Alas, none of that happened, because the top-brass at Disney and Lucasfilm were too caught up in faux-controversies to realize that they had no one to blame for this failing but themselves.