Disney may not be publicly commenting on why The Acolyte was cancelled, but we have internal information all the same, it seems. All this Acolyte info is coming from insider Jeff Sneider, who previously had a bit about how Keanu Reeves at one point almost played Sol, something that doesn’t really fit with Leslye Headland saying she wanted Lee Jung-jae from the start.
Now, we have further information on the cancellation of the show from him, though I’m not entirely sure a lot of this couldn’t be deduced from existing information. The highlights are:
It was cancelled due to low viewership – This is likely to push back against the idea that this was done to placate “toxic fans” who review bombed the show and made an industry out of videos complaining about it.
Viewership dove after episode two – I can also fully believe this as this is what a lot of third party data suggested, and also the first few episodes of The Acolyte were…not very good. Yes, yes plenty will say the whole show is bad, but as someone who really did like it by the end the key phrase there is…by the end. If viewers quit early they never made it to the all-timer episode 5 Night with its wild lightsaber fight and shocking deaths. I think that would have won people over but most left after two episodes, if they showed up at all.
It cost $630,000 for every minute of screen time – Given that The Acolyte was estimated to have a $180 million budget before this, and eight episodes are about 40 minutes long on average, that would actually push it closer to $200 million. Maybe deduct a bit if some of those minutes are opening or closing credits, but yeah, probably right around that $180 million.
Above all else this was the reason it died, and it is unclear how the show, wholly disconnected from the Skywalkers and that entire era, was supposed to hit viewership metrics to justify a budget like that. Andor reportedly cost $250 million and was also not well-watched, but it had a second season because that was negotiated up front. No such luck for The Acolyte, but this is very much a Disney spending problem, not a show problem, as we’ve seen this time and time again with their movie and film projects. This is a studio reportedly paying Robert Downey Jr. alone $100 million to wear a mask as Doctor Doom, after all.
There are not plans to remove the show from Disney Plus – Fans were starting to freak out that The Acolyte was not only cancelled, but Disney might “Willow” the show, remove it from the service altogether. This is reportedly not happening. This would not have been a “tax write-off” like we’ve seen from Max with things like the Batgirl movie. But because the show was already released one main reason would be to avoid paying residuals on it indefinitely. But there are “no plans” to do that, so trust that as much as you will.
I am really not shocked at anything here. I have said that while extremely irritating, the Acolyte-haters club did not get the show cancelled, and it was always cost vs. viewership. But with that high a cost and a concept that was never going to drive anything like the viewership it needed, all of this is squarely on Disney. And while I’ve said it’s not impossible Disney changes its mind, I think this info is leaking to show why they’re not going to.
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