Hey! Would you look at that? A Star Wars movie is breaking box office records! Who would’ve thunk it?
All jokes aside, though, what with all the hype around the Donald Glover (and Alden Ehrenreich and Emilia Clarke) starring Solo: A Star Wars Story, it’s no wonder that the movie is already out here breaking Memorial Day box office records. Solo sold $14.1 million in ticket sales in Thursday preview ticket sales, which is a record for a Thursday before Memorial Day weekend, Entertainment Weekly reports. The title was previously held by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which made $13.2 million on the same day back in 2007.
Solo is projected to make a healthy box office profit of somewhere between $130 million and $150 million over the entire Memorial Day weekend, but it will have to outperform these projects to beat the overall Memorial Day weekend record, which is also held by Pirates of the Caribbean. Back in 2007, At World’s End raked in $153 million over the four-day opening weekend.
In addition, although even anything on the low side of box office projections for Solo is still a pretty solid payday, the movie is not expected to beat the opening box office records set by The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, or Rogue One. The best shot that Solo has is to outperform Rogue One, which opened to $155 million.
In any case, if you can cast your mind to Memorial Day weekend last year, the movie theaters were offering yet another Pirates of the Caribbean movie (Dead Men Tell No Tales) along with Baywatch. There’s something to be thankful for, then: between Solo, Deadpool 2, and Avengers: Infinity War in theaters this weekend, things are definitely looking up.
