A sprawling Hollywood Reporter article is making the rounds titled “Is Disney Bad at Star Wars?” And while there is plenty of debate to be had there (I know which way I’m leaning) there is a ton of news made within the piece about past, present and future projects.
The two biggest news items in there, I’d say:
Ahsoka saw a decline of 829 million minutes for its debut, around Mando season 3 levels, to 570 million for the rest of its run. But still, season 2 is happening, and it will go into production next year, leaving a sprawling gap between seasons of the show. Almost three years, most likely.
The report says that the Mandalorian and Grogu movie is replacing season 4 of The Mandalorian, rather than joining it, where THR says “it also looks like Disney spent many years and untold capital struggling develop a new Star Wars movie and its best idea was an extra-long episode of a TV show.”
What is unclear is whether Mandalorian and Grogu is meant to be the finale for those characters, or if a season 5 could still happen. There have been other indications that “The Mandalorian” may someday refer to other Mandalorian character, not just its current lead (Pedro Pascal is way too busy to keep doing this, besides).
- Other interesting tidbits here are that The Book of Boba Fett was actually supposed to be an ongoing season until incredibly poor reception killed it.
- Despite cast interesting in continuing Obi-Wan Kenobi from Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen, no further seasons are planned.
- Skeleton Crew, the upcoming kid-focused series starring Jude Law, inspired by The Goonies, seemed like it would be another miniseries, but if it does well, they may make it ongoing.
- The report reiterates that The Acolyte was cancelled essentially entirely because of very poor viewership on the back of an absurdly high budget, claiming it was not done to please vocally angry fans, though that was the perception, even among some in the cast.
The end result on the TV side is…there is literally one show that is still considered to be actively ongoing, Ahsoka, and that second season will arrive almost three years after the first. Andor has season 2 coming but it’s over after that. Skeleton Crew has to perform well to be renewed and we have no idea what it’s budget is. The conclusion here, to say nothing of the currently empty film slate, is that yes, Disney has been pretty bad at Star Wars.
Disney has announced they’ll make loads more Star Wars shows in the future, even if we don’t know what they are, and there are 3-4 movies supposedly in the works after at least that many have been conceived and cancelled. But there’s an additional report that Disney is making $1 billion in Star Wars revenue along at this point, and its controversial film slate racked up billions before it paused. But the biggest issue may be these Disney Plus TV series with huge budgets and lumped into a streaming service where Bluey episodes are likely doing 5x their numbers, and adding relatively few new subscribers by themselves. We’ll see where they go from here.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
