When Disney spent $4 billion on Lucasfilm back in 2012, it made a pretty ambitious plan to make the money back as quickly as possible. That meant sequels, spin-offs, new trilogy plans and TV shows – lots of them – and all as quickly as they could be made. But after a (comparatively) lukewarm reception for Solo, Disney have announced that they might have made a mistake.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that he’s rejigging the plans for the Star Wars universe – putting some projects on the backburner.
“I made the timing decision, and as I look back, I think the mistake that I made — I take the blame — was a little too much, too fast. You can expect some slowdown, but that doesn’t mean we’re not gonna make films. J.J. [Abrams] is busy making [Episode] IX. We have creative entities, including [Game of Thrones creators David] Benioff and [D.B.] Weiss, who are developing sagas of their own, which we haven’t been specific about. And we are just at the point where we’re gonna start making decisions about what comes next after J.J.’s. But I think we’re gonna be a little bit more careful about volume and timing. And the buck stops here on that.”
We know that the release date of Episode IX is safe – and whatever Benioff and Weiss are doing seems to still be a priority – but this seems to suggest that pretty much everything else is still up in the air. There’s no mention of Rian Johnson’s new trilogy, the Obi-Wan movie, the Boba-Fett spin-off or anything else, which means we might have to wait quite a bit longer to see them, if we ever get them at all.
To be fair, applying the breaks seems like the best decision. Regardless of how well Solo did at the box-office, franchise fatigue is a real problem that Disney would do well to avoid. Audiences might be keen to pay for three Marvel movies every year (at the moment…), but Star Wars is likely to have a slightly more niche appeal once the nostalgia of the new trilogy has been and gone.