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Financially it's been fine, but the last movie was disliked by critics, the audience reviews were mixed at best, and the fanbase has been at each other throats.

by Lazare 7y ago

Financially it's been fine, but the last movie was disliked by critics, the audience reviews were mixed at best, and the fanbase has been at each other throats. Hollywood tends to pay a lot of attention to CinemaScore (very roughly: exit polls of people seeing it on the opening night), and The Rise of Skywalker got the lowest CinemaScore (B+) of any live-action Star Wars movie - lower than Solo and the prequels. "They audience liked it ALMOST as much as the one with Jar-Jar!" is not what Disney wanted to hear, especially since that sort of thing will have huge flow on effects to the ongoing revenue stream (toys, theme park rides, merchandising). For example, I believe the newest Star Wars ride has sharply underperformed, and Disney leadership will probably believe (correctly) that the poor reception the latest movies got was a driving factor. And the box office take, while still very substantial, was underwhelming for what was meant to be the crowning glory of a 40 year franchise, and compares poorly to other end movies for big franchises. The "point" of buying Lucasarts from Disnye's point of view was to apply a lot of money and some of the magic they've used on the Marvel franchise to make a truly vast amount of money, get a bunch of critical acclaim, and set up the franchise as a money spinning machine that will keep filling theatres for spinoff movies every year forever. Instead they merely made a very large amount of money, the critics said the last movie stunk, and the fanbase seems deeply disinterested in more movies, which had led to them cancelling a bunch of planned movies. It's not that bad, and I'm sure it's fixable, and the Mandalorian is doing great, but MAN is it less than what they were hoping for. (And persistent rumours have it that Iger intervened directly into the creative process of The Rise of Skywalker late in the cycle. If true, that makes the disappointing TRoS results reflect on him...but I obviously have no idea if that's true.) That being said....I don't think Star Wars was bad enough to trigger this. CEOs typically can do much worse for much longer, and as others have noted, the choice of replacement (and the speed of the replacement) is mystifying. I would guess ill health, or maybe some sex scandal rather than poor performance being a factor.

garmaine 7y ago
> The "point" of buying Lucasarts from Disnye's point of view was to apply a lot of money and some of the magic they've used on the Marvel franchise to make a truly vast amount of money, get a bunch of critical acclaim, and set up the franchise as a money spinning machine that will keep filling theatres for spinoff movies every year forever. Instead they merely made a very large amount of money, the critics said the last movie stunk, and the fanbase seems deeply disinterested in more movies, which had led to them cancelling a bunch of planned movies. Sounds like they shouldn't care what the fans think. I mean, existing comic book readers aren't the target audience for the Marvel movies anymore. If they want Star Wars to reach similar success, then they need to build a loyal fan base an order of magnitude larger, of which traditional fans make up only a small amount.
- Lazare 7y ago
  > If they want Star Wars to reach similar success, then they need to build a loyal fan base an order of magnitude larger, of which traditional fans make up only a small amount. That's exactly what they were trying to do, yes. Not just sell a bunch of tickets to people that will watch whatever popcorn flick is showing, but to create and expand a new, young, dedicated fanbase. The problem is, it doesn't seem to have worked. :) (Some of the most rabid Star Wars fan I know are in their early 20s, were nuts about Star Wars, loved TFA, loved Rogue one, but have been steadily growing cooler as the Disney trilogy advanced. And every time Disney changed course to make one group happy, another got even more outraged, until eventually everyone was upset. I know people who saw TFA in theatres several times, TLJ twice, and then ended up not buying a ticket for TRoS. Anecdotal, of course, but the box office and CinemaScore support it, and the way Disney had cancelled or postponed a ton of projects suggests it's widespread.)
hobofan 7y ago
I'm not even sure that the movies underperforming is that significant. The are making boatloads with merchandise, and with every new movie they've introduced at least one new cute character that everyone seems to gobble up (BB8, the mini-peguin-like thing, now baby-yoda). They've also opened up Galaxy's Edge at one of their parks which brings in a lot of visitors. Yes, they had to relax their movie timeline a little bit, but they're operating Star Wars close to their monetizable limit.
- Lazare 7y ago
  > They've also opened up Galaxy's Edge at one of their parks which brings in a lot of visitors. Yes, but it's bringing in a lot less than they expected. See, eg: https://cosmicbook.news/disney-star-wars-galaxys-edge-low-attendance-high-cost https://cosmicbook.news/disney-star-wars-galaxys-edge-low-at... https://www.disneytouristblog.com/star-wars-land-crowd-predictions/ https://www.disneytouristblog.com/star-wars-land-crowd-predi... https://deadline.com/2019/09/key-disney-parks-executive-exits-amid-lackluster-star-wars-galaxys-edge-attendance-1202743079/ https://deadline.com/2019/09/key-disney-parks-executive-exit... Nor are merchandise sales doing very well either: https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/star-wars-merchandise-sales-declining/ https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/star-wars-merchandise-sa... https://fortune.com/2018/01/18/with-star-wars-toys-the-force-is-strong-but-retail-sales-arent/ https://fortune.com/2018/01/18/with-star-wars-toys-the-force... https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hasbro-ceo-says-error-made-211048276.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hasbro-ceo-says-error-made-21... > Yes, they had to relax their movie timeline a little bit, but they're operating Star Wars close to their monetizable limit. Maybe. The fact remains that Disney had projected better performance. Whether that means Star Wars is less valuable than they thought, or whether they're doing a worse job of realising that value than they'd hoped is a fascinating question though. :)

by Lazare 7y ago

garmaine 7y ago

> The "point" of buying Lucasarts from Disnye's point of view was to apply a lot of money and some of the magic they've used on the Marvel franchise to make a truly vast amount of money, get a bunch of critical acclaim, and set up the franchise as a money spinning machine that will keep filling theatres for spinoff movies every year forever. Instead they merely made a very large amount of money, the critics said the last movie stunk, and the fanbase seems deeply disinterested in more movies, which had led to them cancelling a bunch of planned movies. Sounds like they shouldn't care what the fans think. I mean, existing comic book readers aren't the target audience for the Marvel movies anymore. If they want Star Wars to reach similar success, then they need to build a loyal fan base an order of magnitude larger, of which traditional fans make up only a small amount.

Lazare 7y ago
> If they want Star Wars to reach similar success, then they need to build a loyal fan base an order of magnitude larger, of which traditional fans make up only a small amount. That's exactly what they were trying to do, yes. Not just sell a bunch of tickets to people that will watch whatever popcorn flick is showing, but to create and expand a new, young, dedicated fanbase. The problem is, it doesn't seem to have worked. :) (Some of the most rabid Star Wars fan I know are in their early 20s, were nuts about Star Wars, loved TFA, loved Rogue one, but have been steadily growing cooler as the Disney trilogy advanced. And every time Disney changed course to make one group happy, another got even more outraged, until eventually everyone was upset. I know people who saw TFA in theatres several times, TLJ twice, and then ended up not buying a ticket for TRoS. Anecdotal, of course, but the box office and CinemaScore support it, and the way Disney had cancelled or postponed a ton of projects suggests it's widespread.)

hobofan 7y ago

I'm not even sure that the movies underperforming is that significant. The are making boatloads with merchandise, and with every new movie they've introduced at least one new cute character that everyone seems to gobble up (BB8, the mini-peguin-like thing, now baby-yoda). They've also opened up Galaxy's Edge at one of their parks which brings in a lot of visitors. Yes, they had to relax their movie timeline a little bit, but they're operating Star Wars close to their monetizable limit.

Lazare 7y ago
> They've also opened up Galaxy's Edge at one of their parks which brings in a lot of visitors. Yes, but it's bringing in a lot less than they expected. See, eg: https://cosmicbook.news/disney-star-wars-galaxys-edge-low-attendance-high-cost https://cosmicbook.news/disney-star-wars-galaxys-edge-low-at... https://www.disneytouristblog.com/star-wars-land-crowd-predictions/ https://www.disneytouristblog.com/star-wars-land-crowd-predi... https://deadline.com/2019/09/key-disney-parks-executive-exits-amid-lackluster-star-wars-galaxys-edge-attendance-1202743079/ https://deadline.com/2019/09/key-disney-parks-executive-exit... Nor are merchandise sales doing very well either: https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/star-wars-merchandise-sales-declining/ https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/star-wars-merchandise-sa... https://fortune.com/2018/01/18/with-star-wars-toys-the-force-is-strong-but-retail-sales-arent/ https://fortune.com/2018/01/18/with-star-wars-toys-the-force... https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hasbro-ceo-says-error-made-211048276.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hasbro-ceo-says-error-made-21... > Yes, they had to relax their movie timeline a little bit, but they're operating Star Wars close to their monetizable limit. Maybe. The fact remains that Disney had projected better performance. Whether that means Star Wars is less valuable than they thought, or whether they're doing a worse job of realising that value than they'd hoped is a fascinating question though. :)