Ahsoka appears to have continued the trend of ever-declining returns for Star Wars on Disney+. Now some online discussion lays bare the size of the issue, and raises the specter for Lucasfilm of the entire Mandoverse team-up movie now being in doubt. The business case may not stack up.
Lucasfilm announced they were developing a Mandoverse movie with Dave Filoni at the helm back in April during the company’s Star Wars Celebration in London. This would bring together surviving characters from Ahsoka, The Mandalorian, The Book Of Boba Fett, and more, together to tell the story of the rise of the Imperial Remnant and their war with the fledgling New Republic.
Now Bounding Into Comics has been reporting on a think piece by the self-styled online Financial analyst who goes by the moniker of Valliant Renegade. In their analysis, published originally as a YouTube video, they cast doubt on the do-ability of this now the figures for Ahsoka have been looked at.
Ahsoka pulled in 829 million minutes viewed according to Nielsen, across the first two episodes which had a joint debut. By the next week, the drop-off was astonishing. It only pulled in 487 million minutes.
As the online commentator succinctly put it:
“It’s not a matter of Ahsoka of being a good or bad show or whatever your personal opinion is. It’s simply a matter that there aren’t enough eyeballs on it to justify turning this into a $400 million capital expenditure for a theatrical release.
There is no business sense for The Walt Disney Company to allow a major Star Wars theatrical release based in this storyline, the Dave Filoni Star Wars storyline to go to theaters especially helmed by Dave himself. The audience simply isn’t there to justify what would be an over $400 million expense. The global audience that would have to come in to cover those costs would be fairly enormous. You’d need to be getting close to a billion dollars in global box office to do that.
He goes on to say that the show really did not move the needle, and is unlikely to bring in the kind of audience needed to make sense to greenlight a movie project. The Star Wars audience is shrinking, as the current approach turns off the older fan base while failing to replenish them with new viewers and fans. It is now a television experience and doesn’t have the numbers or brand power left anymore to propel it back to the big screen.
This is Disney’s legacy since purchasing Lucasfilm.
All in all, a pretty damning analysis. What do our Outposters think of these figures and conclusion?
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