Ron Howard has blamed the disappointing box office of Solo: A Star Wars Story on an online trolling campaign.

Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the film’s director said that, while he noticed “pushback” from the previous Star Wars film, The Last Jedi, he felt “aggressive trolling” was a crucial factor.

“It was pretty interesting,” Howard said. “It was especially noticeable prior to the release of the movie. Several of the algorithms, whether it was Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes, there was an inordinate push down on the ‘Want to see’ [score on Rotten Tomatoes] and on the fan voting.”

On its release in May 2018, Solo – a standalone “anthology” Star Wars film filling in the backstory of Han Solo – underperformed at the box office, with a global take of $393m (£310m), well below the $1.06bn of the Franchise’s previous anthology film, Rogue One, released in 2016. Industry commentators largely ascribed its failure to “franchise fatigue”, with Disney CEO Bob Iger admitting the company had made a mistake in releasing Solo only six months after The Last Jedi.

Review aggregator sites such as Rotten Tomatoes have been the focus of negative campaigning, with The Last Jedi targeted – as also happened with Black Panther and Ghostbusters – by trolls attempting to lower its scores. Howard said that “friends in Silicon Valley had explained” to him what the pattern of voting meant. In 2019, Rotten Tomatoes announced it was adjusting its site rules after a barrage of negative comments for Captain Marvel, prior to the film’s release.

No user reviews are currently available on the film’s Rotten Tomatoes site, while Metacritic’s users rate it at 6.2, compared to 7.6 for Rogue One.

“I didn’t take it personally,” said Howard.