These moves seem to confirm what we have long suspected. The bubble has burst. Air is rushing out of the streaming balloon and studios have realized that these hugely expensive TV shows are not driving subscribers anymore, so they simply aren’t making more money from their content. The only place you get the $$$ is at the big show and then from home release and licensing to others. As a result, Disney has decided to turn Lando into a movie, rather than a streaming show.
Marvel Studios is also doing this kind of thing. After spending millions on Secret Invasion to drive the grand total of zero new subscribers to their platform, the Don Cheadle-led Armor Wars is also now going to be a movie.
Yes. Movies. Remember them? Merchandising tie-ins, controllable release windows, a share of the box office, some physical media sales income, then some content for your streamer that has already been paid for and hopefully made you some cash, before you settle into a long and happy life earning residual income from licensing it out to everyone else. It’s amazing nobody thought of it before!
Lucasfilm apparently confirmed the move to Variety. Lando, starring Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian, is to be a movie. The project was first announced as a series in late 2020 as part of Disney Investor Day. So yet another announcement made by Lucasfilm that has subsequently changed. Has anyone considered simply nailing the door to the PR department shut so they stop getting themselves into this sort of trouble?
Glover played a younger version of the Billy Dee Williams’ role in 2018 for Solo: A Star Wars Story. That movie was better than a lot of what Disney has pumped out into the Star Wars universe but was caught in the backlash from The Last Jedi. Lucasfilm panicked, and other than what felt like a hastily assembled franchise capper in The Rise Of Skywalker, Star Wars retreated to television. One of the most important franchises in the history of cinema turned into a television fixture by studio incompetence, basically. Pretty damning outcome, isn’t it?
Dear White People creator Justin Simien was attached, but reports state that he left the project a while ago with Donald and his brother Stephen Glover providing a new take that got Lucasfilm interested.
Is there an outbreak of common sense due at Lucasfilm?
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