May 25th is an important date for Star Wars fans. It was on that date in 1977 that the original Star Wars movie was released. However, Star Wars fans, or at least some of them, are not spending May 25 celebrating the 43rd anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope. Instead, they're focused on today being the second anniversary of another movie in the franchise, Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Solo wasn't a smash hit when it arrived in theaters two years ago, but it's clear that the movie has fans, as they're still hoping that sequel to Solo could still happen. Last year the fans got Make Solo 2 Happen trending on Twitter, and this year they're all back at it again, flooding Twitter with calls to make the sequel that was clearly expected to happen when the first movie was made. There are some passionate fans out there who aren't letting this one go.
Solo: A Star Wars Story has the dubious distinction of being the only Star Wars movie of the Disney era not to make $1 billion at the global box office. Having said that, it was still a top 10 movie of the year at the domestic box office in 2018 and it grossed just short of $400 million worldwide. It's a number that could have resulted in a host of sequels if it was any other movie. However, due to some behind the scenes turmoil that resulted in the original directors getting replaced, which in turn led to a significant amount of reshoots and a longer than expected filming schedule, Solo was almost certainly a much more expensive movie to make, making the comparatively smaller box office take hurt the movie that much more.
While the expectation initially was that we would be getting a whole series of Star Wars Story spinoff films, Solo's lack of success apparently killed that plan. It doesn't feel like there's a great deal of mourning for the spinoffs or Solo in general, but today it's equally clear that there are certainly people who love this movie and want to see more.
And Solo: A Star Wars Story certainly left some stories to be told. The move ended with Qi'ra as the new head of a criminal enterprise, the ultimate head of which was revealed in the film's finale to be Maul. Anybody who hadn't kept up on the animated Star Wars series would have been shocked that Maul was even still alive at this point, and even those that knew he was were excited by the possibilities of such a reveal.
At this point, it seems highly unlikely that the Solo 2 fans will actually get the movie they want. Of, course, some don't actually need a theatrical follow-up. They would be happy with a Disney+ series that didn't even necessarily include Han Solo, but instead focused on the criminal organization being run by Qi'ra.
Of course, if there was one aspect of Solo: A Star Wars Story that was met with a great deal of support, it was Donald Glover's performance as a young Lando Calrissian, and so, for those people, more Lando is really all they want. And honestly, can you blame them?
And who knows, following the news that one group of fans has successfully helped a project we never thought we'd see reach the light of day, perhaps the Solo 2 crowd will be energized to build up their own movement.
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