Being perfectly honest, we can’t say that we didn’t see this coming. Yes, as the headline suggests, two in-development Star Wars movies have been put on hold.

Previously, we’d heard how Stephen Daldry was to tackle a picture centred on Obi-Wan Kenobi’s time between Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars (or A New Hope, to you young ‘uns), and it was only a matter of weeks ago that Logan’s James Mangold was confirmed to be writing and directing a film focussed on Boba Fett.

Now, the disappointing box office haul brought in by Solo: A Star Wars Story has seen both the Obi-Wan and Boba movies put on hold by Lucasfilm. Collider broke the news, with the full attention of Lucasfilm and Disney to be put on next year’s Star Wars: Episode IX. Similarly, it’s still full steam ahead on the new cinematic Star Wars trilogy that Rian Johnson’s working on, not to mention the movies that Game of Thrones’ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have been developing.

Here at Moonbase Alpha, we hugely enjoyed Solo. The thing is, the picture has only managed to bring in $340 million globally at this point – the movie’s budget being in the $275 million range. For some perspective, Rogue One was said to have received a lukewarm box response by many, yet that film took home $700 million. Then there’s The Last Jedi’s haul of $1 billion and The Force Awakens’ monstrous $1.7 billion box office. All of this makes Solo the lowest grossing of the recent Star Wars efforts, and by quite the large margin.

When looking for the reasons for Solo: A Star Wars Story’s poor performance, we guess there are several factors that you could look at. We guess the big one is the question of whether fatigue has now set in with this most iconic of cinematic properties, which then can have you attaching Solo’s disappointing return to the unhappiness many had with The Last Jedi. Then there’s the fact that many people simply didn’t have any sort of need to see the tale of the young Han Solo. To them, Han is what they know and love in the Holy Trilogy and beyond, and they didn’t need to see the ins and outs of why and how he became the scruffy-looking nerf-herder we first saw in 1977’s Star Wars.

Regardless, Solo was a brilliant movie, even if it may have been a movie many of us didn’t realise we needed to see. Out of all of the more recent Star Wars efforts, many have rightly suggested that Solo feels the most like a classic Star Wars film of yesteryear.

Still, it appears that the ramifications of Solo: A Star Wars Story’s poor reception are now to be felt on other Star Wars Story movies, with the aforementioned Kenobi and Fett pictures now indefinitely put on hold.

As ever, expect more on all things Star Wars as we get it.