Details for Solo: A Star Wars Story retailer exclusive Blu-ray sets have been revealed. The film, which was positioned as Lucasfilm's big summer blockbuster, had a pretty rough go at it during its theatrical run. Opening well below expectations at the box office, Solo will end up losing Disney quite a bit of money, mainly due to its infamous production woes that inflated the budget past $250 million. To date, the spinoff has earned just $353.4 million worldwide, considerably below the hauls of the other Star Wars films of the Disney era.
With Solo's time on the big screen winding down to a close, soon fans will be wondering when they can bring the movie home to experience again in their living rooms. No release date has been set yet, but now viewers can see the variety of packages that'll be available when that time does come.
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Target and Best Buy shared their Solo exclusives on their respective websites today. The former actually has two options for consumers. The first includes what's called a gallery book, which includes pieces of Solo concept art. Another is for REDcard users and comes with a metal model of the Millennium Falcon. You can check out pictures of these below:
Since Star Wars returned with The Force Awakens in 2015, Best Buy has produced Blu-ray Steelbooks for all the new films. That continues with Solo. The front of the packaging is an image of the Falcon in-flight, while the back cover depicts Han, Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian, and Qi'ra outside the ship. The Steelbooks's interior is of the Falcon's cockpit.
These all seem to come with three discs: the movie in 4K, the movie on Blu-ray, and one with bonus materials. It'll be interesting to see what kind of special features are included on the Solo release. To their credit, Lucasfilm has been open when it comes to discussing the unprecedented director change Solo endured, but it certainly isn't the easiest topic for them to talk about. Rogue One, which went through tame reshoots by comparison, didn't have any deep exploration on Tony Gilroy's involvement or the third act changes on its own Blu-ray. Perhaps Ron Howard will cover some things in a commentary track (considering there is one), but fans shouldn't expect a full-length documentary like Episode VIII's The Director and the Jedi. At this point, the studio would prefer to move on.
The sad thing for Lucasfilm is that even if Solo sells very well on home media, it may not be enough to push the investment into the black. That previously reported $50 million loss included pieces of "ancillary revenue," such as Blu-ray shipments. There's no denying the studio made an extremely tough call when they moved from original directors Phil Lord & Chris Miller, opting to reshoot most of the film under Howard's watch. That put Solo in a tight spot to turn a profit, so Lucasfilm seemingly sacrificed money in the name of making a better product. It's encouraging they're willing to take a loss if it means making a good movie, but this is a situation that should be avoided from here on out.
