More Damning ‘Solo’ Statistics | UK Box Office Report 1-3rd June 2018

After an underwhelming opening weekend that seemed to indicate the first financial failure of Disney’s ownership of Lucasfilm, Solo: A Star Wars Story went into its 2nd weekend in desperate need of a financial bump. With Fox’s Deadpool 2 and fellow Disney movie Avengers: Infinity War battling it out for space in movie theatres and eyes from the paying public, it faced stiff competition for the top spot on the UK chart. Solo made it, but only just. Here are the top 5 movies at the UK box office for the weekend of 1st-3rd June 2018…

Dropping 49% from its opening 4-day total of £6.1million to £3,147,338 in its 2nd weekend, this week’s number 1 movie Solo: A Star Wars Story seems to have performed better in the UK than it has in international markets, with the film taking a hit as large as 65% in its 2nd weekend in North America and the rest of the world all but turning away from the Lucasfilm juggernaut.

The UK figures make for perhaps the only positive reading of this week’s Solo analysis, as the stats have been boosted by how the film has held onto audiences beyond expectations to claim a drop off as low as 35% when this Friday to Sunday period is compared to its opening weekend Friday to Sunday total (which doesn’t include Thursday previews and came in at £4.8million).

However, given the scope of the project and the expectations that come with being labelled as a Star Wars movie, Solo is still under-performing here in the UK with its total accumulation to date being £13,907,406, just £900,000 up on what Deadpool 2 earned in its opening 5 days despite having the advantage of being a 12A release (compared to DP2′s 15 rating), and at an overall gross that is less than fellow A Star Wars Story franchise entry Rogue One earned in its opening weekend in 2016 (£17.3million).

Internationally is where the story really develops however, as Disney shares took a hit this week in response to a number of factors, with the most major of which being the lack of certainty regarding the worldwide public’s interest in Star Wars following Solo’s bad box office performance. Usually, when shares take a hit, heads role and the direction of a brand is altered, so it’ll be interesting to see how Disney and Lucasfilm course-correct, if they do at all in the coming weeks and months.

It was in Solo’s home market of North America where the figures were most damning, with the Star Wars Story release taking a 65% drop from its three-day opening weekend total of $84million to earn just $29,396,882. Usually, drop-offs so huge are reserved for massive box office openers, but for a film to open at under $100million in the US and still drop off at such a rate seems to be indicative of an audience that simply doesn’t care for the movie.



The 65% drop was the Star Wars franchise’s 2nd biggest in history, including the animated films and special edition re-releases, almost matching the 67.5% drop-off The Last Jedi experienced as a result of its 2nd weekend including Christmas Eve, a generally very low earning day for the North American box office.

As things stand, Solo is currently behind all Star Wars live-action releases in terms of 2nd weekend grosses when adjusted for inflation, and sits on just half of what Rogue One had made at the same point in its run, earning just $149million overall. To put this in perspective, Solo has earned $80million less than The Phantom Menace had at the same stage in its release, $90million less than Attack of the Clones and $160million less than Revenge of the Sith, each movies that were disliked by vast portions of the audience, Star Wars fans and casual cinema goers alike.

These figures have of course contributed to a poor worldwide gross, but the most shocking statistic of the week comes from Solo earning just $30million in every non-North-American market in the world over this past weekend to plonk it on a worldwide total of $267million (just 55% of its suspected production and marketing costs). At this stage, it seems unlikely that Solo: A Star Wars Story will out-gross Peter Rabbit ($344million) at the worldwide box office and it’s 99% certain that it will fail to out-gross Fifty Shades Freed ($370million). Chinese releases Detective Chinatown 2 ($536million)and Operation Red Sea ($575million) will now certainly out-gross Lucasfilm and Disney’s Solo; a likely death knell to any plans to expand Solo beyond its one release and into a spin-off franchise.

In short, Solo is certain to become the first financial flop of the live-action Star Wars franchise.

In at number 2 for the weekend and pushing itself into the number 4 spot in the UK box office’s annual list is Deadpool 2 which earned £2,530,069 to push it to an overall total of £26,701,776 here in the UK and a worldwide accumulation of $598,506,035 (£447million), the 3rd highest gross of any release in 2018 (behind Black Panther and 1st placed Infinity War).

And, finally for the top 5, Avengers: Infinity War has held strong by remaining above £1million for the 6th weekend in a row to take its UK total to £68,824,457, the highest of any movie released this year, and a figure that sees it finally surpass Beauty and the Beast to become the 2nd highest grossing movie in the region since 2016 (behind only The Last Jedi). In North America, the Marvel Studios juggernaut will overtake Jurassic World as the region’s 5th highest grossing movie of all time later this week, with its worldwide crossing of the $2billion mark likely to come soon after.



Here are the top 15 highest earning movies at the UK box office for the weekend of Friday 1st June to Sunday 3rd June 2018:

  1. Solo: A Star Wars Story – weeks on release: 2 – weekend: £3,147,338 – total: £13,907,406
  2. Deadpool 2 – 3 – £2,530,069 – £26,701,776
  3. Avengers: Infinity War – 6 – £1,058,425 – £68,824,457
  4. Sherlock Gnomes – 4 – £938,672 – £7,116,136
  5. Book Club – 1 – £720,858 – £720,858
  6. Show Dogs – 2 – £601,535 – £2,214,857
  7. I Feel Pretty – 5 – £255,587 – £5,062,342
  8. Blade Runner: The Final Cut – £213,737 – £3,732,557
  9. Veere Di Wedding – 1 – £207,228 – £207,228
  10. On Chesil Beach – 3 – £129,206 – £623,127
  11. Life of the Party – 4 – £113,800 – £1,660,250
  12. Peter Rabbit – 12 – £100,055 – £40,716,465
  13. Carry On Jatta 2 – 1 – £99,498 – £99,498
  14. 2001: A Space Odyssey – £91,170 – £91,170
  15. The Greatest Showman – 23 – £90,895 – £46,713,317

Outside of the top 5, there were places for 2 Bollywood debuts in Veere Di Wedding and Carry On Jatta which earned respectable figures of £207,228 and £99,498 respectively considering the success of other films of their type, while Blade Runner: The Final Cut earned itself a 5th consecutive week back in the chart following its limited re-release, boosting its original gross by millions of pounds in this most recent run.

The Greatest Showman has also made a surprise return to the chart to prove that there’s no getting rid of the musical which now stands just 3 weeks away from being on the chart for an entire 6 months. Stanley Kubrick classic 2001: A Space Odyssey also managed to break the top 15 with a respectable £91,170 earning upon its return to cinemas as a part of a season dedicated to paying tribute to Kubrick’s work, while British release On Chesil Beach failed to earn enough to see a £1million national gross become a viable target.

This coming weekend, the UK box office welcomes the gargantuan blockbuster Jurassic World 2, and the dinosaur-filled action movie will be aiming to top the debut totals of Deadpool 2 (£13million), Black Panther (£17.7million) and Avengers: Infinity War (£29.4million) on its way to the top of the chart. We’ll have full details and analysis in next week’s report, as well as more on the developing Solo story. For now, make sure to bookmark our homepage to make sure you don’t miss out on our latest and greatest content, subscribe to us on YouTube for first access to our weekly box office chart videos (released every Tuesday), like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.



Leave a Comment