Disney admits Dark Side for Star Wars, plans release ‘slowdown’
THERE IS A disturbance in the Force. After the lackluster performance of the latest installment in the wildly popular
Star Wars saga, Disney is tapping the brakes on the franchise - an acknowledgment that there can be too much of a good thing.
In an interview published Thursday, CEO Bob Iger told
The Hollywood Reporter that Disney plans to slow down the
Star Wars release schedule, admitting that it had been a mistake to shuttle a new film into theaters every year.
“I made the timing decision, and as I look back, I think the mistake that I made - I take the blame - was a little too much, too fast,” Iger said.
“You can expect some slowdown, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to make films.”
Disney - which paid $4 billion for Lucasfilm in 2012 had promised a new Star Wars movie every year after the hotly-anticipated 2015 release of The Force Awakens: news they believed would delight fans around the world.
After all, The Force Awakens picked up 30 years after the events of 1983’s Return of the Jedi - and came a decade after the previous Star Wars movie of any kind.
But Disney, whose initial plan was to alternate releases between chapters in the main series launched in the late 1970s and one-off films expanding the Star Wars universe, seems to have learned that anticipation is part of the equation.
Earlier this year, the standalone Solo: A Star Wars Story earned $400 million worldwide - a stellar result for most movies, but a mediocre return for a Star Wars film, leading observers to speculate about franchise fatigue.
In contrast, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which was released just six months before in late 2017, earned more than $1.3 billion worldwide.
A global phenomenon
The next film - Episode IX,
announced as the last installment in the main Skywalker
saga, and directed by JJ Abrams - is due for release in December 2019. “Star Wars
became a global phenomenon, of course, as a rare and infrequently-served delicacy,” said Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University.
“Star Wars movies were like locusts, or blue moons: impressive but not often. That’s all changed and Iger is probably right in his assessment,” Thompson said.
But he added: “The franchise may be beginning to show its age, but ‘slowdown’ or no slowdown, I expect to see lots more attempts to squeeze it for all it’s worth.”
Indeed, in February, Lucasfilm announced that the team behind Game of Thrones
would create a brand new Star Wars series. The films by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators of HBO’S Emmy-winning smash hit fantasy epic, would be separate both from the main storyline and the trilogy being developed by Rian Johnson, writer-director of The Last Jedi. “We have creative entities, including Benioff and Weiss, who are developing sagas of their own, which we haven’t been specific about,” Iger said, without offering more details.
“We are just at the point where we’re going to start making decisions about what comes next after Episode IX,” Iger added.
“But I think we’re going to be a little bit more careful about volume and timing. And the buck stops here on that.”
Exhibitor Relations senior box office analyst Jeff Bock said despite the issues, the franchise was hardly in jeopardy.
“There is so much potential with the Star Wars TV element that the movies can take a back seat for a while if need be,” Bock said.
Star Wars movies were like locusts or blue moons: impressive but not often.”
Robert Thompson