Upcoming New Star Wars films/Disney+ series

[cheshire]

[Whill]

[cheshire]

[Whill]

I keep forgetting to post SW news updates that I come across during my day.

Disney delays 'Star Wars' and 'Avatar' films

The pandemic has delayed preproduction of both the next three Star Wars films and the next three Avatar films, so Disney has officially pushed the schedule back one year. So currently, the plan for the next SW film is now scheduled for December 2023 instead of 2022. But of course there still aren't any details of if this will be an anthology film or part of a new series, or who will make it. The possible makers are above this in the thread.

In light of the DT, the pandemic killing the cinema industry (and me no longer wanting to go to the theater), and no concrete details of where the franchise will go from here cinematically, at this point I find that I hardly care if there even are anymore SW films.
_________________
*
Site Map
Forum Guidelines
Registration/Log-In Help
The Rancor Pit Library
Star Wars D6 Damage

[cheshire]

I mean, it really can't hurt to have Star Wars cinematic experience lie fallow for just a little while, COVID or no.
_________________
__________________________________
Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[Whill]

[MrNexx]

[Whill]

[MrNexx]

[Whill]

I moved the below post and replied here because it is more general to the future of Star Wars then the wishful thinking DT related discussion.

[Yora]

Very well. If you're going to open this can of worm for us, I am happy to join in on poking it.

I also feel like I am not really having a dog in this race. As I see it, the only worthwhile Star Wars releases after 2003 are Revenge of the Sith and the KotOR comics. (Still on the fence about The Mandalorian.) I don't expect any return to old form, so whatever is being released or not released now doesn't really make any difference to me.

But I have been following what's going on with the overall American entertainment industry for a few years and Star Wars is simply standing out as one particularly prominent case of chaos, cluelessness, and collective self delusion on all sides.

There absolutely and undeniably are haters who deliberately sabotage things with spreading lies and stoking resentment. Because there always are. And certainly they are naysayers who should just be ignored and left to stew in their own petulant anger. But we have a saying of "even a blind chicken sometimes finds a grain". Just because an argument is being made my a terrible person who has malicious intent doesn't automatically mean that the argument is wrong.
But that's how it's very often spun. 10 people say Rey is a terribly written character. One of these ten people makes it clear he doesn't like female protagonist to begin with. That invalidates his claim that Rey is a terribly written character, but does not actually affect the arguments of the other nine people. But in many places the conclusion is "all people who say Rey is a terribly written character do so because they hate women. We should all ignore their opinions and all the arguments they make, I have my fingers in my ears, lalala I can't hear you."
People say it's unfair to lump the other 9 people into the same box, and then the claim is that they defend the women-haters because they are also women-haters. And by that point any form of objectivity and discourse is out of the window. And now you also have people who automatically always assume the worst and blow every small thing out of proportion, making it sound like a huge scandal or disaster that nobody will remember in two days.
I really don't approve of quite a number of people who are presenting information on these subject from a perspective of company leaderships and producers having no idea what they are doing. There are plenty of people whose way of presentation and biases that seem to shine through I find quite objectionable. Of course I am not counting, but I think an estimate that I find about one third trustworthy, feel uncertain about one third, and one third being malicious agitators seems to feel right.

Established entertainment journalists overwhelmingly take the side of the content producing companies, because they still want to be invited to previews and press events. Report that the companies have problems and that their output was no good, and you're not getting invited again, which means you won't be among the first people who will be reporting on news anymore. It's not just Disney, it's not just the movie industry. It's the entire entertainment industry. Video games have it just as badly, if not even worse.

I think in the end, you have to live by the words of Ronald Reagan: "Trust, but verify." It's not enough to simply decide on what people you want to believe when they are making claims of what's going on behind the scenes. You also have to look back six or twelve months later and compare what they claimed to have a scoop on, and what actually happened later. You have to follow the various people for some time and see what their actual track record is on how well their predictions turn out to be true.

I believe (an assumption based on my own awareness) that currently the main source about leaks regarding Star Wars is Doomcock. He doesn't use his real name and hides his face with a silly mask, and he doesn't reveal his sources, which of course put the initial amount of trust in his credibility that you should give him pretty low. When you hear about him for the first time, there really is no good reason to trust him at all. An anonymous guy on the internet who claims he has a "source" who told him that he has spoken with an "insider" at Lucasfilm who overheard things being said in meetings. Anyone could claim that and pull stuff straight out of his butt.
And some of his claims seemed outrageous. Clickbait to stir up an angry mob to bully innocent employees. There was supposedly a leaked script for Rise of Skywalker. "Rey is the grandchild of the Emperor, who returned out of nowhere as a clone? Ridiculous!" That's actually what happened. "They were still doing reshots in October? Don't be stupid!" They actually did reshots in November. "They shoehorned in the cloned Emperor while filming already started? Nonsense, that was always the plan, as people at Lucasfilm say it was." We now know that Matt Smith was cast as the main villain and had already shot his scenes when that character was completely cut from the movie."
Yes, many of the rumors and claimed leaks about current developments at Lucasfilm sound much too stupid to see true. But most of them turned out to be right, as unbelievable as it is.

I don't think anyone should just take my word for it. I'm just some anonymous guy on the internet. I don't have anything to back any of my claims up. I even might have been fooled by a web of lies and been tricked to repeat and spread that nonsense. I can't rule that out.
But if this is an issue that people are interested and invested in, I very much recommend to try keeping track of rumors and leaks and official denials and announcements and then later comparing to who turned out to be right. People who have been right in the past are more likely to be right in the future. People who have been wrong in the past are more likely to be wrong in the future. That should determine on whose claims you assign more significance to.
Though in the end, it really doesn't actually matter. What we are thinking sitting at home won't lead to any consequences. The only thing that matters is if we think "I liked this movie, I am going to see the next one too" or not.

Now to the financial aspects brought up by Whill.

Lucasfilm Ltd. is a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation. They are kind of a separate entity, but in the end all the employees of Lucasfilm are working for, getting paid by, and have to follow orders from the shareholders who own the Disney stocks. Unlike many other corporations, Disney does not really have any majority shareholders, with the biggest share being only 7%, and the top 10 shareholders together controlling only 32% of the shares. So it's really not one or even five people who call the shots, but a big blob of thousands of people. And all that these people agree about is stock price and dividend payments going up. There is no passion for art or entertainment that is going into their decisions. They all elect a board of directors (who I believe are getting generous compensations for their work) and if the directors want to keep that position they need to do their best to give orders to the management employees that the blob of shareholders collectively agrees on. They also can't make their decisions based on artistic merit or entertainment values. They have to base it on what makes a profit and increases stock prices and dividend payments.
As I understand it, Lucasfilm would have its own bank accounts, which its management uses to conduct its business. But the Disney directors could at any time decide to take money out of those accounts and give them to other subsidiaries, or give them more money that they got from elsewhere. Which in practice means that Lucasfilm still works on a budget.

Now Star Wars is very famously not just a series of movies, but a giant juggernaut of associated entertainment products and toys. As massively successful the first movie and The Force Awakens were with audiences, in the long run their significance is primarily as a commercial for all these other products.
If a regular movie breaks even and makes back it's production and marketing budget, that's a good start. But it's not actually great. You would want to invest 500 million and get back 800 million. If you invest 500 million and only get back 500 million, the whole movie was a waste of time, during which you could have made a different movie that makes a bigger profit. And in economics "profit not made" is basically regareded as a loss.
I've seen several people estimate that Solo should have broken even, not resulting in any loss, but its profit would likely be marginal. Stock owners won't be happy with that. No profit means that none of that profit can go into dividend payments. And when other people see that movies make no profit, then they won't be much interested in buying Disney stocks, which makes the stock price drop. So movies breaking even is not acceptable.
The Rise of Skywalker made a lot more money, but it also was a lot more expensive. The estimates that I've seen also assume that it probably made either a very small profit or a small loss. (Official production costs for all movies are always assumed to be too low and marketing costs have to be added to calculate profits.)
If investors think that the movies make no profit then they are wondering why they are allocating money to Lucasfilm to make these movies in the first place? Instead they could use the money to have someone else produce something that does make a profit.
But wait, Star Movies are also toy commercials that still can make it all worth it. Except that it doesn't. Disney Star Wars toys don't sell. I'm not an insider myself, but I've seen plenty of claims that supposedly come from people in retail who say the goods are sitting like lead on the shelves even when put on sale, and getting destroyed because the storage costs are not worth it.

Going from toys to videogames, EA has failed to use its license to make Star Wars game since basically forever. They are completely wasting it and many people are really puzzled why Disney hasn't done anything to get the license back to give to someone else. Because Disney also only gets a share of the sales when there are sales.
There have been a few new games in recent years. But look at Battlefront 3 and 4, Jedi Fallen Order, and now Squadrons. They are not set in the Disney Movies timeline. Instead they are referencing the Galactic Empire and the Clone Wars. Because EA also thinks that that's where the money is to be made.

There could be hope for Disney Star Wars if stockholders think "we need to see this as an investment that will pay back in the long run, even if it doesn't know". But they can't. Disney can not afford to give money away that will return a profit in some years. Disney's main sources of income are cruise ships, theme parks, hotels next to theme parks, and movie tickets. In roughly that order. None of these are bringing in any money this year. But even when not in operation, they still generate massive costs every day. Disney is super broke. They wasted all their cash reserves in the past years, like buying Lucasfilm for 4 billion dollars, and buying Fox for 71 billion dollars, and now they are surviving entirely on massive bank loans. Which is debt. Disney can't be generous and give Lucasfilm freedom to try out various experiments to see what will be profitable or not.
Currently it's wait and see and hope the credit line will get extended until business can resume. But then massive overhauls will be necessary and nothing will be safe from cuts or getting sold off.

Whill said that Star Wars has become profitable for Disney and made back its initial investment. Are there any sources for this? After having covered the production and marketing costs of all the movies and show, and including the profits from toy sales, is the total surplus actually bigger than the 4 billion they paid to buy Lucasfilm and all the Star Wars rights? Because until that money has been made back, any surplus made from the money still won't be an actual profit.
_________________
"Adventure? Eh... Excitement? Eh... A Jedi does not crave these things."

Iridium Moons Retro-futuristic Space Opera

[Whill]

Yora, that's a lot to unpack. I'll respond to some of it. Maybe others will reply to more.

I started seeing "reports" of Disney recouping their investment in buying Lucasfilm in 2018 after TLJ's theatrical run. I don't think there has been any official declaration from Disney and doubt there ever will be. Sometimes you see financial analysts being quoted. Like you first said in the box office thread, definite production and marketing costs are not always publicly available for all films, so we are dealing with estimates. I don't think it happened in 2018. But I do think the break-even point for the original investment alone happened before the pandemic. (I agree that breaking even is not good enough.) Star Wars alone has literally dozens of revenue streams. Yes, some make more money than others. Disney dumped a lot of money into original content for Disney+ (some of which is Star Wars) and they said that they estimated they would not break-even for several years. The pandemic has help subscription rates but they are still far from breaking even on that investment.

A major source of revenue streams with various results is licensing. Yes, I do think that Disney has been stuck with some license contracts but Disney was aggressive at getting new ones. I thought Star Wars was really commercialized back in 1999 when I saw Star Wars bars of soap and a lot of new products I never would have imagined with the SW logo on them, but Disney has gone way above and beyond what Lucas had done with the franchise. I think there was even a Nissan tie-in with Rogue One. A lot of these licensing deals are just the licensee paying a lump sum up front for a set time period of exclusiveness. Those deals do not involve any expense from Disney. The licensee is responsible for most or all marketing of their licensed products and all responsibility to profit and risk of loss is all on the licensee.

However, whether Disney has recouped its Lucasfilm investment or not is not really in the big picture for Disney. $4 billion is chump change. Disney just paid $71.3 billion for 20th Century Fox last year, and they definitely have not broke even on that. Disney is hurting bad and bleeding money from the amusement parks alone. I still think that in some form, Disney and Star Wars will be around for a while. Maybe I'm wrong. It won't be the end of the world.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, as much as I try to stay positive and not to be all gloom and doom, and I think there is a good chance that the movie theater industry will not survive the pandemic. Without theatrical releases, the only hope of big budget films having a future is going to be direct internet rentals as first release. Disney is experimenting with a form of that for its live action Mulan film which was supposed to come out in the theater earlier this year. They have decided to replace the theater release with debuting it on Disney+ as a subscriber-only streaming rights purchase. So subscribers can pay a one-time fee of $30 and that gives you permanent streaming rights as long as your subscription is active. Eventually, it will be available for traditional rental and purchase (disc and digitally), and someday, it will be free on Disney+. My family isn't interested in spending money on it, but a family with a couple kids spending $30 and popping their own popcorn at home is still spending as much or even less than a single trip to the movie theater, and they can watch it repeatedly if they want. If business models like this are successful, then maybe home rental could replace movie theaters and the blockbuster business can survive. If not, then the centerpieces of the Star Wars franchise of the future may become TV shows and lower budget films.

[Yora]

Absolutely. That was merely the first example that poped into my mind to illustrate the wider issue. Which is large numbers of people engaged in the whole conversation shutting themselves off and insisting that the world is how they imagine it, refusing to engage in discourse and looking for evidence to test their assumptions.

The end result is that you constantly have wild claims thrown arround with no basis in reality and still plenty of people promoting them. And that makes finding any information that seems trustworthy very difficult.

Ultimately I think that the entire entertainment industry is undergoing major overhauls this year and continuing in the following years. And nobody has any clue how production and distribution will look like on the other side. That's why we see an unending stream of announcements, cancelations, and projects quietly disappearing as if they never existed. Investors want to have assurances that something is being done that will start to make profits again once things are settling into a new system, so companies try to keep up appearances that they will have great products ready for the market soon. But they don't know either what they actually have to work with and what the market will demand, resulting in lots of desperate wild shots in the dark. Right now the real priority is job security.
_________________
"Adventure? Eh... Excitement? Eh... A Jedi does not crave these things."

Iridium Moons Retro-futuristic Space Opera

[Whill]

Star Wars Rogue Squadron film announced!

Rogue Squadron will be directed by Patty Jenkins of Wonder Woman fame. Her father was a fighter pilot who lost his life in service to America. She wants to make the best fighter pilot movie ever. I'm actually excited about Star Wars movies again.

https://twitter.com/PattyJenks/status/1337177394625478656
_________________
*
Site Map
Forum Guidelines
Registration/Log-In Help
The Rancor Pit Library
Star Wars D6 Damage

[MrNexx]