Disney woes: Star Wars is having the opposite problem of Marvel fatigue

There’s a sort of hangover happening in Hollywood right now, as various major studios wake up, look around at the wreckage of their current fiscal lives, and ask themselves the long, hard questions, i.e., “How much money did I spend on a streaming TV show sequel to The Mighty Ducks in 2021?” Even Disney, which we generally think of as a sort of giant worm that eats people’s child-like wonder and craps out money, is feeling the pinch at this point, as Bob Iger and his team are forced to reckon with several years of heavy, streaming-focused spending.

Hence a new report from THR today—dovetailing with reporting yesterday centered on the Marvel portions of the company’s IP trove—that analyzes the weird place that the company’s very expensive, hypothetically lucrative Star Wars properties are sitting at here in early 2023. Which is, to wit, sort of the opposite of the Marvel position, where the company has shoved out so much content into theaters that it’s thoroughly exhausted itself. Star Wars, on the other hand, has been in a functional retreat since 2019's Rise Of Skywalker, having released only TV shows—The Mandalorian, Obi-Wan, The Book Of Boba Fett, and Andor, if we focus only on the live-action offerings—and no movies in the period in-between. Which is a lot of TV…but none of the big box office wins that only a theatrical feature can bring.

Now Disney is looking to reverse that position… while also adhering to all the belt-tightening that’s been the product of the industry’s ongoing, very bloody re-appraisals of its streaming models. Which is a pretty fundamental paradox, all told; an insider told THR that “Lucasfilm may ramp up, but it will have to abide by the same fiscal discipline as the rest of the company,” and we can already feel the ulcers start to form.

All of this is only made more nebulous by the fact that there are still no official Star Wars movies on the books, even now (although the franchise’s TV efforts will continue; Mandalorian season 3 arrives in a couple of weeks, while the Ahsoka show is expected later this year). But while there are a number of vague placeholders—“the Rian Johnson movies,” “the Taika Waititi movie,” etc.—floating around, Disney has yet to announce anything concrete. The THR piece notes that we’ll probably get something at the Star Wars Celebration event this April in London, but if the company hopes to jump-start the franchise back into theaters (and on a budget, no less), it’s got a lot of work cut out for it.