Star Wars is broken
The Force grows weaker every day. Plus: checking in on another franchise, the Lord of the Rings.
The Gist
More Star Wars news broke this week, with one movie pushing forward and another taking another creative hit.
It represents the continued turbulence for the franchise, as it works to dig itself out of disaster.
Plus: New viewership data reinforces that “The Rings of Power” season two was a big disappointment.
Some Star Wars news broke this week. First, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Ryan Gosling was in talks to star in director Shawn Levy’s movie. Then a few days later, it broke that yet another writer had been hired for the Rey-focused “New Jedi Order” (working title) movie.
I rolled my eyes at both.
The former sounds like a desperate attempt to fast-track something, anything for theaters that isn’t part of the Mando-verse. Levy made “Deadpool and Wolverine,” so it follows a familiar theme of Lucasfilm gravitating towards the current “it” boys who shepherded a big hit and handing them a Star War: Benioff and Weiss (Game of Thrones), Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok), Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World), Lord and Miller (Solo).
Except all of those people were either pushed out from their respective projects or walked away before they even got off the ground.
In Levy’s instance, he’s someone you hire if you just want to get something made quickly and competently without much fuss, so I could see this actually happening. But who knows when.
For the latter, here’s what Variety had to say about the Rey movie:
By the time Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy officially announced the project and Ridley’s involvement at Star Wars Celebration in April 2023, the film — which currently has the working title of “Star Wars: New Jedi Order” — had already lost its initial screenwriting team of Damon Lindelof (“Lost,” “Prometheus”) and Justin Britt-Gibson (“The Strain”). Their replacement, Steven Knight (“Peaky Blinders”), worked on the film for over a year before departing in the fall of 2024 … Knight’s departure coincided with the removal of a “Star Wars” film scheduled for December 2026 from Disney’s film slate, indicating that the film is nowhere near ready to go before cameras.
In other words: This movie is not happening.
The two reports underline a sad truth about the Star Wars franchise that I’ve written about ad nauseam but felt compelled to do so again: It is utterly broken. A disaster.
I’ve written about the diminishing returns of the Disney+ TV shows and their dwindling viewership. “The Acolyte” was quickly canceled and there’s hardly a peep about “Skeleton Crew” (which I actually enjoyed). It has yet to chart on Nielsen’s weekly streaming rankings. This is a STAR WARS show from the director of “SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME” with an episode directed by the OSCAR-WINNING DIRECTORS of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” And nobody seems to care.
That’s what happens when you run a franchise into the ground. Disney is obviously going to back away from the onslaught of TV shows (after spending the last half-decade turning Star Wars into Star Trek), but is it too late? Whatever magic was conjured when “The Mandalorian” first premiered has been lost to the galaxy, and it makes me worried about next year’s “Mandalorian and Grogu” movie.
One could look at the moves that Disney/Lucasfilm are making as a good sign. Getting the “Mandalorian” movie into theaters and moving the Levy project along, whatever it is, is positive momentum. But it’s overshadowed by far too many mediocre TV shows and comically too many botched announcements for movies that will never see the light of day (It’s hilarious that Lucasfilm announced a three-movie “past, present, future” plan, and Levy’s doesn’t fit into any of those).
Up next for Star Wars is “Andor” season two this year, which should at least momentarily spark some good will for the franchise in terms of quality if not viewership, and then “Mandalorian and Grogu” in summer ‘26.
Beyond that, the future is murky.
PLUS: Checking in on Lord of the Rings
In October, I wrote about how Amazon’s “Rings of Power” season two was, similarly to the first season, suffering from a lack of enthusiasm — at least for what is reportedly the most expensive show of all time.
I analyzed that, based on Nielsen data (and even numbers Amazon released), the second season had lost over half of its US audience compared to the first season.
A new report from Luminate backs that up, saying that the season two audience dropped 60% from season one. If you’re Amazon, that’s not exactly what you want after paying $250 million for the rights to make the series.
I also noted in that story how the animated Lord of the Rings movie “The War of the Rohirrim” was tracking low on The Quorum’s awareness chart ahead of its release. It ultimately bombed with just $20 million worldwide, $9 million of which came from the US.
Warner Bros. is still going ahead with a Gollum movie for 2026, but I’d be worried if I was them.
Beyond the Traverse
🧙♀️ That Luminate report also pointed out the low viewership of Marvel shows “Echo” and “Agatha All Along” compared to other MCU series.
☣️ As the video game-to-movie pipeline heats up, the “Barbarian” director is taking on a “Resident Evil” reboot.
😎 Remember when people thought Will Smith was teasing a new Matrix movie? Turns out he was just teasing a new song with Big Sean.
👨⚖️ A court battle is shaping up between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery regarding the streaming rights for “South Park” specials.
I didn’t realize Skeleton Crew hasn’t charted at all. Shocking and dismaying.
BEEN broken.