It must be difficult owning the two biggest franchises in the world, huh? Well, if you’re Disney and you own both Marvel and “Star Wars,” you have to be thinking that right about now. As Marvel Studios continues its record-breaking dominance of the box office, “Star Wars” is starting to show signs of vulnerability. And the main culprit of this is frequency. And in a new interview with Disney CEO Bob Iger, it’s that frequency that seems to work for one and definitely not the other.
Marvel Studios, over the last decade, has gone from one film every year to three films, and showing no signs of slowing down. That doesn’t even take into account the numerous TV series currently on the air that takes place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So, it makes sense that Disney would apply this same strategy to “Star Wars.”
Oops.
Starting with one film a year (after fans have grown accustomed to waiting years, or even decades), Disney hit the ground running with the galaxy far, far away. And it worked. ‘The Force Awakens’ shattered records in 2015. The next year, the first spin-off, ‘Rogue One,’ rode that ‘TFA’ wave to over $1 billion worldwide. Then in 2017, ‘The Last Jedi’ was huge, but not nearly as big as ‘The Force Awakens,’ and had the added wrinkle of controversy.
Then came ‘Solo.’
Oh, poor ‘Solo.’ In an example of Disney/Lucasfilm hubris, ‘Solo’ was released a mere 5 months after ‘Last Jedi’ and unlike the Marvel Studios films, the latest ‘Star Wars’ spin-off suffered from the frequency and posted franchise-low box office numbers.
So, who’s to blame for this seemingly “too much, too fast” strategy? According to Iger, the buck stops with him (via THR):
“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.”
Now, as many people read into the lack of post-‘Episode IX’ plans meaning there must be trouble at Lucasfilm and Disney, the truth is that they’re just taking a breather before continuing. Does that mean we’ll get a new ‘Star Wars’ film in 2020? We’re unsure. Perhaps, Iger and the folks at Disney will take a year off before jumping into Rian Johnson’s new saga (which is interestingly not named by Iger) or the other saga from the “Game of Thrones” guys.
Either way, we know that Disney will think twice before releasing ‘Star Wars’ films 5 months apart. Lucasfilm is no Marvel Studios.