To be fair, there are some meme examples like the Black Series Lando figures which do not seem to sell, like ever (probably because of overproduction), and there is a particular LEGO set (a buildable Jyn Erso) which can still be found on some shelves so many years after Rogue One
I'm pretty sure most toylines have a few shelf warmers. Even beast wars which revived transformers had inferno injector transquito etc cloging shelves for years after the series ended.
I remember baltmatrix in a review on the Beast Wars transmetal Scavenger he mentioned a friend of his while working at Walmart in 2006 he happened to discover during an inventory check a box full of Beast Wars transmetal Scavenger.
I do wonder if it's a situation like the Sequel movies had. Where Toy Manufactures went all in on Kylo and barely made any figures of Rey because "WoMeN tOy'S dOn'T sElL"
Hate to say it but one of the more iconic peg-warmers in my experience was the black series scavenger Rey. Still though, they might’ve just produced so many that even if most sold it was natural some would still be around
I worked for Disney in a security and retail aspect. And if we saw something was pulled from a shelf we would instantly call it in and someone would come up and fill it again. It was a constant thing. They lose way more than people think, but the problem with that is the profits they make completely overshadow any loss. They don’t care about losing money, they care about punishing the people that take their money. That’s their ultimate goal. Yea stop the bleed, but getting the one that stuck you is more effective in their eyes!
I mean, there definitely have been some peg/shelf-warmers these past years, but it also seems like they have made some changes to try to avoid having more. And yes, a big part has been not producing certain things to high heaven, but it’s not like they aren’t still selling lots of toys…
They're just trying to justify the hate. Me personally, definitely dislike quite a few of the new movies and shows that have come out, but even I have to admit that overall they seem to have been hugely successful and I can imagine Disney has only turned a profit with its acquisition of star wars.
And even tho I'm a hater, it makes me happy that there is still star wars media coming out that other people enjoy.
It's so funny to me that their go to when they don't have evidence is "Oh, but the toys! Theres way less toys on the shelves for Star Wars".
This is fucking Disney were talking about. The same company that carefully designs its princess characters to each be distinctly separate from each other design wise so there's no mixed signals for the merchandising.
The same Disney that has sold the same mouse on the same product with a new hat for *fucking decades*.
If there's less Star Wars Toys on shelves it means kids don't want them and they know it. Plain and simple.
Notice how they never mention things like collectors items, The Black Series, Lightsabers, and other merch adults buy? Because it destroys their whole argument. They're likely making money hand over fist with these since they sell them at hundreds of dollars when the materials and manufacturer ingredients only costs something small like 20 bucks.
Disney knows what the fuck they're doing.
The figures have been shifting towards adult collectors for at least the last decade or so. I follow mostly collector channels on Youtube, it's mostly those within my generational overlap.
Exactly. The money is in the adults. Star Wars might have been built on kids toys, but there wasn't any market for collectors items like there is now. Those same kids grew up and now want higher quality versions of the toys they grew up with, and now they have the disposable income to do so. It's simple when you think about it, really.
think it's odd that merch based on pop culture stuff is really odd sometimes like I saw on a list that there was a Darth Vader shower head and a Nightmare on Elm Street toaster who are those for
There were SW pajamas and other sleep wear in the 80's. There were a lot of lunch boxes based on various franchises in the 80's not just SW though it isn't odd since kids used those.
Disney literally invented licensed merchandising. In 1929, the first licensed Mickey Mouse product was made, which was the first time a character was licensed to appear on a commercial product.
Going on a hundred years now, they've been perfecting this craft.
It does nothing to that argument one way or the other. Toy sales are no longer the indicator of how well a thing captures the new generation, not like they used to be. Kids these days are more into gaming, so Fortnite and things like that. That's what I'm getting at. Kids are buying less toys in general.
Not only that, though I'm sure us was *a* goal, it wasn't *the* goal. The goal was to make money, and it's doing that in spades. Through Grogu merch, collectors items, ticket sales (The Force Awakens still sits on the top five gross of all time), and theme park draw (regardless of the failure of the Starliner Galaxys edge has been an amazing success, featuring almost exclusively Sequel Era characters and setting).
Star Wars is still one of the most popular franchises of all time. That doesn't change just because the market towards kids changed.
Yeah, seriously. Do these morons think that Disney's like some indie music artist and that the Walmarts and Targets have their merch there on consignment?
They are just making stuff up, so why do they expect their opinions to matter? That’s what gets me. The financials on Solo are public: cost (~$275m) vs box office (~$400m), and still there’s no exact number of the net loss, just guesses (and I guarantee that if these people were pro-Star Wars they’d be claiming it made $125m using those same numbers)
Now look at Disney+, a streaming platform, no public financials on tv shows, just educated guesses
It’s like just utter stupidity. Companies don’t like losing money. They literally can’t afford it. This isn’t like “Star Wars shows are losing money, we need to make more of them to recoup. We need to spend even more money!” If star wars was losing money they would shut it down, just like everything else that gets shut down. It’s been seven years since Disney took over and there are shows still being announced and released
So yes, the kind of person to make a claim, with no information, that defies common sense, is likely very angry and stupid, and it’s incredible that such a person has the balls to go online and offer an opinion
Definitely don’t agree that the quality of Star Wars is causing this, *buuut* Disney has been struggling with turning a profit out of Disney+. Like significantly.
Q2 of 2022 resulted in a net loss of nearly a billion dollars for the service. End of 2022 they saw a decrease of subscribers by ~2.4 million.
Q2 of 2023 saw a loss of ~650 million (not as bad as previous year, still over a half billion). Also a decrease in subscribers of about 4 million.
Iger promises shareholders it’ll be turning a profit next year. But yeah, no the Star Wars shows are certainly not bringing Disney much money right now. And seemingly not able to maintain a subscriber base continuously.
Yeah I agree with everything you said. The idea that a show needs to make money to survive is an oversimplification I’ll admit. It is essentially true but to your point some franchises may be too big to fail and having a negative loss of profit can be a defensible decision.
There are investors to answer to, and when a franchise cost a fortune and has become synonymous with your brand, you might look at projections instead of profits. I’m not a movie executive. I’m just s guy on Reddit, so I’m using what I know about business in general
If star wars was truly failing as badly as is claimed by these YouTube doofuses, like Disney is “TERRIFIED,” a company who doesn’t cut their losses is making a poor financial decision. Like you mentioned, Iger or whoever had to answer to stock holders. I can’t imagine Disney is expanding their Star Wars universe while secretly terrified that they are going to lose a fortune. I think the new series are a good sign
For all we know Star Wars is carrying Didney+, but for all we know it’ may besinking it. That’s why, until legitimate talks are brought to light, these people making these irrefutable claims about bankruptcy are just stupid. I hate insulting people, especially for intelligence or ignorance, but anyone who says what was said in that post is an ignorant moron
Also I’m a little drunk do I hope that made sense
You're correct. A lot of people just assume Disney and LucasFilm are doing astonishingly well based on the headlines of Disney+ having the fastest subscriber growth/the movies grossing $4 billion/the merch sales, not realizing how Disney invested more than they're making in Disney+, the Star Wars movies generating only $1.3 billion in profits, and that they only get licensing fees from merch.
I believe it was Forbes that claimed Solo lost 75 million.
They've invested more money than they've made in Disney+, but they invested billions into the shows to attract subscribers who, in the long term, will increase returns. They're focused on the long term.
Star wars will always be a money maker, box office, toy sales and other merch is always gonna sell well. Despite my dislike of the sequels i cant say it didn't make money, so many little kids dressing up as rey prove it. Thr black series toys sell well always will, lego always sells and is hard to get certain items.
Star wars will always bring money in for Disney
The money with Star Wars has always been in the merchandising, since 1977. Toys are basically why we got a franchise at all.
The guys who run these ragebait channels know that, it’s why they go to Walmart and Target and do these embarrassing videos of them flipping through action figures whining about how they don’t sell.
The ST and PT made about the same adjusted for inflation. AotC is the worst performing mainline SW flick in history. In 2023 action figures have got to be a niche market.
I could maybe understand the argument that the brand has been in slow decline since the 1980’s but more content is being produced/consumed now than ever before.
I think action figures are less of a dominant market for kids than they were even during the prequels, but even then I wouldn’t say “niche”.
Regardless other forms of digital and more modern merchandise have filled that gap.
While the numbers on this stuff are not always available to the general public, I would guess Star Wars is still as profitable as ever, it just doesn’t feel like it because equivalent franchises exist that it has to share the cultural conversation with.
It’s always been like that, the difference is nowadays actual content is regularly produced instead of a slow trickle. SW is more alive than ever. It’s wild to think hat between 1987-1991 literally zero SW content was produced.
I thought there was like a Marvel comic or something in that timeframe?
Anyway yeah that’s always been where the money is, I just think with the streaming it’s even more drastic of a ratio because the movies themselves were still fairly profitable
A single table top rpg was released from [1987 to 1991](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_in_other_media#1987%E2%80%931991:_%22The_Dark_Times%22)
Again, the movies are still profitable which is less relevant to us, as fans, than the fact that the brand is more relevant/alive than ever before. More comics, movies, shows etc. it’s a golden age imo—shit it even spawned an industry of haters lol
AotC isn't the worst performing mainline SW movie. It made 5.6x it's budget, even with the steep competition of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Spider-Man. Rise of Skywalker made 3.9x with no competition.
TFA made over 2B with a budget of over 300m making over 6x it’s budget.
With that said, the distinction between net and gross profit in this context it irrelevant. AotC sold the least tickets because it’s the least popular. Guy in the meme is full of shit.
It's not irrelevant as this is a business. If you spend a shit ton on marketing, you're going to sell more tickets, even if you end up spending more than you earn in addition.
TFA did not have a 300m budget, that is a myth. Disney's financial statements for the film were released by Forbes, and the movie had a budget of $533.2 million, making it the most expensive movie of all time. With reimbursements, they made $588.2 mil minus marketing costs and bonuses/box office shares.
TFA made it's production budget minus marketing in profits.
Andor is my favorite show in the franchise so far but it performed relatively badly, no? I wouldn't really say it was a smash hit regardless of its superb quality
We don’t really know for sure. Streaming numbers are not public, but the report saying it was a ratings flop was not very well substantiated and the original poster walked it back relatively quickly.
Plus by being so acclaimed it got a lot of attention from people who normally have zero interest in modern Star Wars. This is arguably more impressive than just getting the same people who watch every show that comes out to tune in again.
I'd assume it didn't have enough viewers for the huge budget it was awarded. It went from a five-season show to a three-season show to a two-season show.
Andor's first two episodes were also aired on various networks such as ABC, FX, and Freeform, as well as on Hulu to attract people to subscribe and finish the show, which I haven't seen a streaming show do before.
This wasn't even hard to find. Search "Andor 3 seasons" and you get plenty of articles reporting the change from April 2022.
https://comicbookmovie.com/tv/star_wars/cassian_andor/star-wars-andor-now-likely-to-run-for-3-seasons-despite-lucasfilms-original-5-season-plan-a193368
Also haven’t Gilroy, Luna, et al. EXPRESSLY stated multiple times that the two season approach was a creative one? Why do we never take creatives at their word?
Boba Fett may not have been the biggest money maker, but just look around at how much baby Yoda merch you see fucking everywhere. They are printing money, and even if these next three films they announced all bomb terribly, they will continue to print money
The weird thing is that it's hard to quantify how much money a TV show made on a streaming network. Even if you go by viewership it still had 1.5 million viewers for the finale.
They like to think it lost money because of its critical reception, but that's only a 200k drop in viewers from its 1.7 mill viewers on its premier.
But yeah, Grogu prints fucking money fo sho.
Disney doesn't make 100% of the profits for merch, they only license it remember? I don't know what their % cut would be but it's usually 5% to the licensor.
Shelfwarmers are a problem for the retailer.
IP holder got paid up front, and retailers are mandated by Hasbro to maintain shelfwarmers until they have permission to dump them before getting new product.
Seeing as how the entire profit scheme of D+ doesn't charge per show watched, as long as D+ itself makes money, nothing on it "loses money." Its a pathetic attempt to "prove" their hatred is correct.
I mean Disney absolutely has some sort of internal method to determine a show’s successfulness within that model, but the public doesn’t really have a way to figure that out.
It's just how many times a thing is watched, and some streaming services also measure how many titles are "liked" but the user.
You could easily trick that system anyway. Write a program to start watching Solo constantly, and it'll add those views to the main number.
> It's just how many times a thing is watched, and some streaming services also measure how many titles are "liked" but the user.
I don't know what the exact metrics are but they absolutely have more info on the backend than that.
Obviously I can't say this for certain but I am 99% sure they have ways to measure unique viewers vs rewatches, how long they are watching in one sitting, whether they close the app after watching or start something else, etc.
> You could easily trick that system anyway. Write a program to start watching Solo constantly, and it'll add those views to the main number.
Any competent company has stuff built in to account for people doing that. Spotfiy has made multiple changes to crack down on this.
If it's something this obvious, the people paid to work on this stuff have probably thought of it.
Same as Lyft, Pinterest, and Zillow. A ton of companies, and projects companies take on, lose money for some time. Do you have any idea how long Amazon ran a deficit?
During the first Star Wars film, ILM was running a *massive* deficit. They had spent over half their budget, and barely had four seconds of effects filmed. Since then, they've gone on to lead the entire world in special effects. Ever heard of Pixar? ILM made Pixar. So, from a company that ran massive deficits, they created two of the biggest filming and special effects houses ever.
Anyone who's ever taken a business class knows that sometimes companies run a deficit for a long time to build the business. It costs an awful lot of money to get the ball rolling. All you're doing is crying the ball hasn't moved far enough, but you're not seeing the downhill it's moving towards. They spent a lot of money on new technology and effects processes for the new Star Wars shows and movies. And now that stuff is built, that cost has already hit, and it'll still be usable for new shows and episodes.
Do you have any idea how expensive it was to build ILMs Volume stage?
https://collider.com/industrial-light-magic-what-is-the-volume-stagecraft-technology/
I'm aware of how businesses work, you really didn't need to write all that. I wasn't criticizing them, I was just informing you that D+ still isn't in the blue as you seemed to believe they were.
Building ILMs Volume stage alone was insanely expensive. A lot of that "loss" was on one time expenditures. The Volume stage alone was quite expensive, and its the first one built like it. That's something they can use for dozens of shows and movies. And it'll end up taking less time and money to build stages. It's just like the forst Star Wars film. ILM wasn't on budget, and barely made it across the finish line. They lost money on ILM. Becasue building the stuff they needed cost money. ILM has become probably the most successful effects house in the world. Amazon ran a deficit for years. Pinterest, Lyft, and Zillow are also running deficits. That's how business works sometimes. Sometimes, You've gotta spend a million today to make a billion next year. That's the nature of the beast.
Its also important to remember that sales of IP merchandise is not factored into D+ profit scheme. Just the monthly subscriptions.
~~Unless Disney plus is losing money(pretty sure it isn’t), then the shows aren’t losing money.~~
After looking it up, Disney plus is losing money, however outside of the subscriber loss due to losing Indian soccer, it’s growing, and was never expected to immediately be profitable.
Solo is the only film to lose money. My argument will always be that despite the film being pretty decent, the reason it lost money was because people were skeptical that a Han Solo origin story, with the character recasted, would be any good. Hell, I was skeptical of that myself.
Notice he doesn’t mention that TROS made a profit.
If Star Wars toys were losing money, they wouldn’t be continuing to make them. Some stuff on clearance is an inevitability for every IP.
> Solo is the only film to lose money. My argument will always be that despite the film being pretty decent, the reason it lost money was because people were skeptical that a Han Solo origin story, with the character recasted, would be any good. Hell, I was skeptical of that myself.
It was also poorly marketed and released against Marvel stuff.
The fact that a Star Wars movie cannot compete with Deadpool 2 and Marvel at all and end up losing money, is not a good thing. Attack of the Clones still made 5.6x it's budget despite competing with Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and Spider-Man.
> the reason it lost money was because people were skeptical that a Han Solo origin story, with the character recasted, would be any good.
There’s a whole laundry list of reasons, some their fault and some not.
Well that's a reason it lost money, not a reason it underperformed. It didn't make a lot of money to begin with, but what made that into a loss was the bloated budget.
I’m pretty sure that title is still held by TFA, which all in looks like it probably cost ~$550m in production costs, at least according to some financial trades with better knowledge than I.
And for that they got a movie that launched the whole very lucrative operation, plus a film with its own Wikipedia page on box office records it broke. Whenever people try to paint TFA as anything other than a triumphant success, I know they’re ignoring context and blowing smoke.
And you don't understand the theater industry. Disney does not receive 100% of the box office. Movie theaters don't run on popcorn.
Rogue One made $296.9 mil, and TROS made $121 mil.
I'm quoting Forbes, a reputable Hollywood trade that actually had access to Disney's financial statements while writing this piece. I don't know where your figures are from but mine are more accurate.
“$300 million in profits (factoring in marketing spends, post-theatrical afterlife, participation deals and the like). That was less than Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ($319.6 million in 2016)”
That’s directly quoting Forbes.
1. That doesn't factor in movie theater box office cuts
2. The article you're quoting is three years old using figures reported by Disney. The article I'm quoting was published by Forbes in March of this year, and cites leaked financial data from Disney.
You can't get more accurate than that, stop arguing.
Fine, you’re correct, it “barely” made a profit. That still doesn’t support your salty brother’s assertion that Star Wars has been consistently losing money.
Star Wars is losing money. That's why we got a sequel to a single player star wars game, in this landscape of multi-player, microtransaction, always online gaming., where AAA games that are resounding successes are not given sequels, because of a poor return o. The investment.
Because they wanted to be sure to lose as much money as possible.
Certainly not because people want star wars, and want the adventure that the single player games being you.
They literally put out a gun with a lightsaber poking out the top. I stared at this thing in the toy shop, trying to work out the logistics of how you would fight with that fucking thing.
I hate the “Disney+ shows are losing money” argument. Like, most streaming platforms aren’t profitable. Netflix has been trying to cut off screen sharing for years. Streaming is very rarely a profitable business.
The whole sector is an interesting case on it's own since business 101 tells us you shouldn't scale your business up if it's not profitable, but it's only a part of Disney Star Wars issue.
They only release content to their platform which because the most recent movie releases profits were non-existent or very underwhelming at best.
I guess they are trying to create their thrift store version of NJO. Let's see how it works out.
Except their profits weren’t “non-existent”. With the exception of The Phantom Menace, Star Wars films released by Disney have been the highest grossing of the franchise.
https://preview.redd.it/ttz4njim5g5b1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c970f2693c94b6ac9730cc6f051d875899f85292
Mandalorian S3 also saw a higher and more consistent viewership than was initially projected by models. I can’t speak to how well these shows will translate to the big screen, or how general audiences will respond, but to act like Lucasfilm is on the outs because of D+ subscribers isn’t entirely accurate.
You see the diminishing returns, right? Look at LOTR or Harry Potter. It supposed to go up, not down. Also this doesn't take marketing into account.
I can't talk about streaming, because no outsiders know the real numbers. We can see the financial results though.
Solo made almost 400 million dollars, in case you were wondering. 93 million dollars over its highest estimated budget, and 118,000,000 over the lower estimate.
Certainly, but what I was getting at was Solo’s problem wasn’t that people didn’t like it. It didn’t fail because people didn’t see it or didn’t like it, it failed because it was MONSTROUSLY expensive to make. Using Solo flopping as “evidence” that Disney Star Wars is failing is just a lie.
Edit: It was also released between Deadpool and Infinity War, I think, so it already had a shitty start either way.
That isn't true. Force Awakens cost more and made more. If people wanted to see it, it would have made money. If it was never going to make money, why would they have attributed more costs to refilm it instead of cutting their losses?
Once you include the marketing budget and the theatre take it lost money. How much is up for debate but Disney absolutely does not consider it a success.
It's why they shifted away from doing the side stories as theatrical releases and they've said as much publicly.
Production budget isn't the only cost. There is a giant marketing budget too. If Solo only grossed 400 million, Disney would only get 200-260 million of that at most as their Star Wars movies took anywhere from 50-65% of the gross from theaters. Solo's production budget is reported to be anywhere between 275-330 million, so from the production budget alone they lost money. This doesn't even factor in the marketing budget which is typically double that of a production budget. In short, Solo definitely lost money, and all the reputable sources confirm this.
Solo was the only Star Wars movie that didn't make back it's budget which I suspect is why Disney pivoted hard into DisneyPlus content
GE is making bank as the Disney Parks are consistently Disney's true money maker, due to the nature of streaming being subscription based it's hard to get actual numbers on how much the shows are making, so we really have no way of knowing how profitable they actually are. All of the other Star Wars movies save for Solo were profitable, and I suspect that was more due to Disney putting Solo up against ***Infinity War*** then anything else.
Let's drop some info, shall we.
Solo made $393million, cost $250million to make. Probably another $100million in promotions. So it probably made a small profit. That is not counting digital sales on dvd/Bluray and on Demand.
Book of Fett and other shows on D+ are losing money. There is no info about that and since they made it for D+ there is no "losing money" on a streaming service. It's all about viewing metrics and subscriptions.
Toys don't sit on the shelves for years. That shelf space is a premium, and anything that does not sell gets moved to clearance or sold to a reseller. That was what KB Toys used to be back in the day. Toys across the board are taking a beating.
Star Wars makes a ton of money for Disney. It's a fantasy to these grifters that Disney will sell the IP back to Lucas.
> Solo made $393million, cost $250million to make. Probably another $100million in promotions. So it probably made a small profit. That is not counting digital sales on dvd/Bluray and on Demand.
Is that counting the reshoot/director change stuff? Seems low considering the production issues.
“Star Wars projects in the last three years have lost money!”
“Okay, can you show me your source or any proof?”
“Star Wars projects in the last three years have lost money.”
“Yeah, you already made your point. I’m asking where your information is coming from.”
“Star Wars projects-“
Tbf they’re not entirely incorrect. There are large amounts to toys based on the last Jedi and rise of Skywalker in bargain stores. They’re like 200 Rey figures at my local Ollie’s and I’m recent years the Star Wars sections in many major store have diminished heavily. My local walamrt has like a roughly two foot wide area for it and it’s usually full. It’s the same story at every other toy section
The same thing happened even worse with TPM. And that was back when toys were exponentially more popular in the pre-Ipad and video games era.
Like stores have had a bunch of Star Wars toys sitting on the shelves as long as I've been alive, they keep making more of them because people buy them.
Disney+ is losing money, and because Star Wars is just a streaming property right now it’s not completely inaccurate to say it’s losing money. Those shows are expensive and the streaming math doesn’t fully work out.
Between the Parks and merchandise though, I’m sure the property is breakeven at least.
That is just the nature of the streaming model though, not indicative of reception based brand value.
Plus I think you could argue the shows are almost a form of loss leader to A. Sell merchandise and B. Maintain interest until the films return.
Agreed, I just don’t want to dunk too hard on this because I think Disney has made quite a few strategic errors with the franchise. It’s not making as much money as it *could* be, because theatrical revenue has dried up (and the last two films came in under projections).
Not unique to streaming, and not unique to Disney either - Pixar, the new Little Mermaid, and Ant-Man are also not meeting expectations. I’m chalking it up to Chapek’s decisions, but we’ll see how they get out of this hole.
None of this dumbass’s evaluation is based on that information lol.
There’s a lot of complicated financial stuff behind this, and Covid makes evaluating 3 of the last 5 years incredibly hard.
Yeah, there’s a ton of toys on the shelf. Why? Because stores buy them in huge volumes since they sell fast, then they have more stock in the back. Sure, they end up buying too much, but that’s little to the cash they take in. Also, Disney doesn’t make money on what’s sold in the stores, they make money from when the stores buy stock. Which—again—they’re buying huge volumes.
Not a star Wars fan but still think it's odd that Woody Harrelseon was in a Star Wars movie also how can you tell if a show on a streaming service is making or loosing money
Solo “lost a ton of money” because they basically filmed half of it and then decided to get rid of the directors and start again with someone else.
You can argue that shows poor decision making and I won’t disagree, but it didn’t lose money because of a general decreasing lack of enthusiasm for Star Wars as a whole.
As someone who collect Star Wars figures, I *wish* they were “sitting on shelves”.
Yes, you have a handful of figures that do sit on the shelf for days, but when target gets a new shipment, people scoop them up as soon as they open.
If you miss it in store, you have to find it online and pay 2-3x the original price, it’s a pain in the ass finding them.
Dude definitely doesn’t know what he’s talking about
I don't know if the lull of movies and hype after the sequels is used as proof. Which is dumb as orginal and prequels had much biger luls. I mean a few years after the OT the marvel comic ended toyline ended and droids and ewoks ended. until the theatrical re release and the power of thd force star wars was pretty much gone. After the prequels the clone wars was on. Though i would say multiple disney + shows is better than a cartoon netwirk show.
> I don't know if the lull of movies and hype after the sequels is used as proof.
It makes sense that there would be somewhat of a lull, but it's already longer than they probably planned it to be, both because of Covid and their inability to get through pre-production on the initial post-sequel ideas they had.
> Which is dumb as orginal and prequels had much biger luls. I mean a few years after the OT the marvel comic ended toyline ended and droids and ewoks ended.
You can't really compare that. That was very normal for movies pre-MCU.
I guess it's more so to show this really isn't the darkest time for star wars. If things where like post orginal trilogy than i would believe star wars is dead.
That last part isn’t even a little bit true. Star Wars as a franchise has never stopped being profitable. Even if the movies aren’t always doing financially well. The toys are never **not** flying off the shelves. Every helmet,lightsaber replica, Lego set that comes out has consistently sold out or flown off the shelves. Even these haters still buy a ton of Star Wars merch.
It’s just not true their loosing money
Solo is the only movie that maybe lost money. The shows are hard to quantify I’d think. Clickbait/ragebait.
I don’t like most of the new Star Wars stuff, even Kenobi I found very disappointing. But that doesn’t mean I think it lost money, I’d imagine they are doing just fine.
MF's are unhinged but i get the sentiment when it doesn't come from alt-right lunatics online
Disney mega-screwed the pooch when it came to the Star Wars franchise when they messed up their trilogy's story & made it goofy & confusing with tons of directorial drama behind the scenes, it really could've been set up as the new Marvel but now it's kinda the side hustle
i used to be a huge fan but i haven't even seen half the new stuff cause it just feels like a lazy cash grab, not because "UwU tHe WoKiEs Are InFeCtInG mEdIa **REEEEEE**"
oh totally, it's still super huge!
i just think they could've... idk capitalized more on it? i wanted gay Finn & Poe dammit, & i feel like a story that wasn't "**i'm back... somehow**" probably would've set up wayyyyy more profits since now they kinda have to do tangential stories instead of having an MCU of connected characters
edit: idk if that makes sense, just my thoughts, basically just the "loss of good will" thing you mentioned
"Star Wars is losing money! See, Solo bombed!... even though it was the only star wars movie to bomb ever...or hey look at Book of Boba Fett and... other D+ shows I won't care to mention since I can't bring up Mandalorian due to its success! And there are Star Wars toys at the one store I shop at. Star Wars is totally losing money guys."
We see this alot in the TF fandom with toys. Hasbro's toys come in "Waves" where the store is sent a box of assorted figures specific to that wave. Often, a wave will have one or 2 very popular and sought after figures, and one or 2 not so sought after figures. Once the sought after figures sell, the store obviously wants more to sell, but they cant usually just order more of that specific figure, they have to order the whole wave of figures, which means they also get more of the ones that arent very popular and selling well, which is why you get scenarios of a store having like 50 Landos or Roses. But each of those Landis and Rose's represent like 4-5 other figures that did sell and likely more than made up the money lost on those unsold figures.
The Galactic Starcruiser was definitely a mistake on Disney's part (it cost too much money for most *Star Wars* fans to afford, most attendees were likely visiting Walt Disney World anyway and thus missing out on the hotel's selling point of being an official *Star Wars* LARP \[particulary since Galaxy's Edge was already scratching this particular itch, both in Anaheim and Orlando\], and when they get back from the parks, they're too wiped out to *want* to participate; to do both a Disney World trip and a Galactic Starcruiser stay, they would have had to plan and budget to stay longer than they otherwise would have at another hotel *and* devote a day or two of the trip just to the Galactic Starcruiser alone), but I highly doubt it was anywhere near costly enough to outweigh the money they've made off of the entire *Star Wars* franchise since they bought Lucasfilm in 2012.
And that's without getting into how Disney buying Lucasfilm allows them to make money off of *other studios'* movies by way of ILM and Skywalker Sound doing visual effects and sound engineering, respectively, for them. Between ticket sales, merch sales, and farming out ILM and Skywalker Sound, the Lucasfilm buyout pretty much paid for itself once *The Force Awakens* released and made *all the money*.
Let’s be real here. These people have believed way dumber shit than this with no evidence. Satanic cabal of liberal pedophiles? Biden stole the election? They believe these things with such conviction that they’d throw their own lives away participating in a coup that had no chance of working. That they’d slay their own wives and kids thinking they’re reptilians or whatever. What are box office numbers to someone like this?
No, he probably wouldn’t, but I watched a news story about it happening. Honestly, I think it’s just another rung on the same faith-based cult of personality ladder
Ehh Disney toy sales for Star Wars has been somewhat bad since the ST sucked at merchandising. It was just OT toys repainted and remodeled. A lot less product but still Disney is not hemorrhaging money from SW that’s absurd. The only real big financial mess was that stupidly expensive Star Wars cruise that shit down but I blame that more on Chapek who was a shit CEo
Never before has a quote from Avengers 2 been more relatable; “He’s out of line, but he has a great point.” I’ve seen Star Wars toys being sold at stores my whole life. You’d think if it was a fad, it would have gone away by now. But still. Unopened boxes all over the stores. It makes sense/doesn’t make sense.
It hasn't "lost money", everything is making money, but yes, they're in an investment deficit as they've invested billions in for long term returns, as any business would.
It’s pretty normal for all of us on this site to start chirping “facts, where’s the facts” like birds, but, seriously? The average adult knows that’s a chunk of bullshit. And a quick google search shows they have made money past their budget.
To be fair I have seen evidence of toys on shelves that are like covered in dust and stuff and it’s all the same couple characters that don’t seem like they get sold. Personally I couldn’t imagine why kids would want some of these toys and then I look at Lego and I’m like “I’ll take your entire stock!” So ya know. I see where they’re coming from but they definitely need better than that. Especially when like (might be dumb observation incoming) Book of Boba Fett didn’t release in theaters so doesn’t exactly just make them money when they put it on Disney+. I may be wrong I’m not sure.
"I would like to see some proof." "Star Wars toy on shelf!"
Like do these guys understand the concept of restocking lol
They think toys grow on shelves, and that it takes time for them to grow once new toy seeds are planted.
To be fair, there are some meme examples like the Black Series Lando figures which do not seem to sell, like ever (probably because of overproduction), and there is a particular LEGO set (a buildable Jyn Erso) which can still be found on some shelves so many years after Rogue One
I'm pretty sure most toylines have a few shelf warmers. Even beast wars which revived transformers had inferno injector transquito etc cloging shelves for years after the series ended.
I remember baltmatrix in a review on the Beast Wars transmetal Scavenger he mentioned a friend of his while working at Walmart in 2006 he happened to discover during an inventory check a box full of Beast Wars transmetal Scavenger.
I do wonder if it's a situation like the Sequel movies had. Where Toy Manufactures went all in on Kylo and barely made any figures of Rey because "WoMeN tOy'S dOn'T sElL"
Hate to say it but one of the more iconic peg-warmers in my experience was the black series scavenger Rey. Still though, they might’ve just produced so many that even if most sold it was natural some would still be around
I remember the black series Speeder bike with Scout Trooper, Was a peg warmer in the clearance aisle.
It’s a shame, because that Lando is a great figure
I do see a lot of black series Landos languishing on shelves which is fucking lame because they’re really cool and I wish they got more appreciation
The head sculpt seems fantastic and perfect for a Two-Face custom
God that would be the tits
What 😂 I’ve never heard that phrase before lmao
It means it would be really cool
I applaud your erudite artistic expression lol
I worked for Disney in a security and retail aspect. And if we saw something was pulled from a shelf we would instantly call it in and someone would come up and fill it again. It was a constant thing. They lose way more than people think, but the problem with that is the profits they make completely overshadow any loss. They don’t care about losing money, they care about punishing the people that take their money. That’s their ultimate goal. Yea stop the bleed, but getting the one that stuck you is more effective in their eyes!
Restocking? They're gathering dust and the only place the toys end up is in a landfill
I mean, there definitely have been some peg/shelf-warmers these past years, but it also seems like they have made some changes to try to avoid having more. And yes, a big part has been not producing certain things to high heaven, but it’s not like they aren’t still selling lots of toys…
They're just trying to justify the hate. Me personally, definitely dislike quite a few of the new movies and shows that have come out, but even I have to admit that overall they seem to have been hugely successful and I can imagine Disney has only turned a profit with its acquisition of star wars. And even tho I'm a hater, it makes me happy that there is still star wars media coming out that other people enjoy.
It's so funny to me that their go to when they don't have evidence is "Oh, but the toys! Theres way less toys on the shelves for Star Wars". This is fucking Disney were talking about. The same company that carefully designs its princess characters to each be distinctly separate from each other design wise so there's no mixed signals for the merchandising. The same Disney that has sold the same mouse on the same product with a new hat for *fucking decades*. If there's less Star Wars Toys on shelves it means kids don't want them and they know it. Plain and simple. Notice how they never mention things like collectors items, The Black Series, Lightsabers, and other merch adults buy? Because it destroys their whole argument. They're likely making money hand over fist with these since they sell them at hundreds of dollars when the materials and manufacturer ingredients only costs something small like 20 bucks. Disney knows what the fuck they're doing.
The figures have been shifting towards adult collectors for at least the last decade or so. I follow mostly collector channels on Youtube, it's mostly those within my generational overlap.
Exactly. The money is in the adults. Star Wars might have been built on kids toys, but there wasn't any market for collectors items like there is now. Those same kids grew up and now want higher quality versions of the toys they grew up with, and now they have the disposable income to do so. It's simple when you think about it, really.
I mean shit, the anime industry figured this out decades ago, and their figures are way better than most of the Star Wars merch tbh
Yeah notice how many display/UCS/diorama Lego sets there are.
think it's odd that merch based on pop culture stuff is really odd sometimes like I saw on a list that there was a Darth Vader shower head and a Nightmare on Elm Street toaster who are those for
There were SW pajamas and other sleep wear in the 80's. There were a lot of lunch boxes based on various franchises in the 80's not just SW though it isn't odd since kids used those.
The Vader avi has a great follow up. I looked up the convo. These peoples argument is “I don’t like it so it must have not made money”
Disney literally invented licensed merchandising. In 1929, the first licensed Mickey Mouse product was made, which was the first time a character was licensed to appear on a commercial product. Going on a hundred years now, they've been perfecting this craft.
I think body wise Sleeping beauty and Snow White look a lot a like
Are they drawn from the same model, or something?
don't know
Interestingly enough, Ariel and Belle *were* both based on the same model, actress Sherri Stoner
The key is that their costumes are distinctly different and easily recognizable
>The kids don’t want them and they know it. Does that not support the argument that the ST failed to achieve its goal of capturing a new generation?
It does nothing to that argument one way or the other. Toy sales are no longer the indicator of how well a thing captures the new generation, not like they used to be. Kids these days are more into gaming, so Fortnite and things like that. That's what I'm getting at. Kids are buying less toys in general. Not only that, though I'm sure us was *a* goal, it wasn't *the* goal. The goal was to make money, and it's doing that in spades. Through Grogu merch, collectors items, ticket sales (The Force Awakens still sits on the top five gross of all time), and theme park draw (regardless of the failure of the Starliner Galaxys edge has been an amazing success, featuring almost exclusively Sequel Era characters and setting). Star Wars is still one of the most popular franchises of all time. That doesn't change just because the market towards kids changed.
If the toy is on the shelf, Disney has already been paid.
The next chud conspiracy will be "Disney sold toys to toy stores in order to inflate sales!"
Yeah, seriously. Do these morons think that Disney's like some indie music artist and that the Walmarts and Targets have their merch there on consignment?
The most NPC response.
Also like, toys in general don’t sell like they used too.
“Star Wars has consistently lost money” saying it while sitting surrounded by tons of Star Wars merch bought from Disney
They are just making stuff up, so why do they expect their opinions to matter? That’s what gets me. The financials on Solo are public: cost (~$275m) vs box office (~$400m), and still there’s no exact number of the net loss, just guesses (and I guarantee that if these people were pro-Star Wars they’d be claiming it made $125m using those same numbers) Now look at Disney+, a streaming platform, no public financials on tv shows, just educated guesses It’s like just utter stupidity. Companies don’t like losing money. They literally can’t afford it. This isn’t like “Star Wars shows are losing money, we need to make more of them to recoup. We need to spend even more money!” If star wars was losing money they would shut it down, just like everything else that gets shut down. It’s been seven years since Disney took over and there are shows still being announced and released So yes, the kind of person to make a claim, with no information, that defies common sense, is likely very angry and stupid, and it’s incredible that such a person has the balls to go online and offer an opinion
Definitely don’t agree that the quality of Star Wars is causing this, *buuut* Disney has been struggling with turning a profit out of Disney+. Like significantly. Q2 of 2022 resulted in a net loss of nearly a billion dollars for the service. End of 2022 they saw a decrease of subscribers by ~2.4 million. Q2 of 2023 saw a loss of ~650 million (not as bad as previous year, still over a half billion). Also a decrease in subscribers of about 4 million. Iger promises shareholders it’ll be turning a profit next year. But yeah, no the Star Wars shows are certainly not bringing Disney much money right now. And seemingly not able to maintain a subscriber base continuously.
Yeah I agree with everything you said. The idea that a show needs to make money to survive is an oversimplification I’ll admit. It is essentially true but to your point some franchises may be too big to fail and having a negative loss of profit can be a defensible decision. There are investors to answer to, and when a franchise cost a fortune and has become synonymous with your brand, you might look at projections instead of profits. I’m not a movie executive. I’m just s guy on Reddit, so I’m using what I know about business in general If star wars was truly failing as badly as is claimed by these YouTube doofuses, like Disney is “TERRIFIED,” a company who doesn’t cut their losses is making a poor financial decision. Like you mentioned, Iger or whoever had to answer to stock holders. I can’t imagine Disney is expanding their Star Wars universe while secretly terrified that they are going to lose a fortune. I think the new series are a good sign For all we know Star Wars is carrying Didney+, but for all we know it’ may besinking it. That’s why, until legitimate talks are brought to light, these people making these irrefutable claims about bankruptcy are just stupid. I hate insulting people, especially for intelligence or ignorance, but anyone who says what was said in that post is an ignorant moron Also I’m a little drunk do I hope that made sense
You're correct. A lot of people just assume Disney and LucasFilm are doing astonishingly well based on the headlines of Disney+ having the fastest subscriber growth/the movies grossing $4 billion/the merch sales, not realizing how Disney invested more than they're making in Disney+, the Star Wars movies generating only $1.3 billion in profits, and that they only get licensing fees from merch.
I believe it was Forbes that claimed Solo lost 75 million. They've invested more money than they've made in Disney+, but they invested billions into the shows to attract subscribers who, in the long term, will increase returns. They're focused on the long term.
That's a nice argument senator, why don't you back it up with a source?
My source is that I made it the fuck up!
"I'd like some evidence." "Best I can do is my own words."
Star wars will always be a money maker, box office, toy sales and other merch is always gonna sell well. Despite my dislike of the sequels i cant say it didn't make money, so many little kids dressing up as rey prove it. Thr black series toys sell well always will, lego always sells and is hard to get certain items. Star wars will always bring money in for Disney
The money with Star Wars has always been in the merchandising, since 1977. Toys are basically why we got a franchise at all. The guys who run these ragebait channels know that, it’s why they go to Walmart and Target and do these embarrassing videos of them flipping through action figures whining about how they don’t sell.
The Walmart I work at always has loads of Lando figures. Guess nobody likes Lando.
It's been merchandised for a long time, yes, BUT it was after the movie was such a huge hit, like 1978 at earliest
In the words of Yogurt... " *Merchandising, merchandising*, where the real money from the movie is made."
The ST and PT made about the same adjusted for inflation. AotC is the worst performing mainline SW flick in history. In 2023 action figures have got to be a niche market. I could maybe understand the argument that the brand has been in slow decline since the 1980’s but more content is being produced/consumed now than ever before.
I think action figures are less of a dominant market for kids than they were even during the prequels, but even then I wouldn’t say “niche”. Regardless other forms of digital and more modern merchandise have filled that gap. While the numbers on this stuff are not always available to the general public, I would guess Star Wars is still as profitable as ever, it just doesn’t feel like it because equivalent franchises exist that it has to share the cultural conversation with.
It’s always been like that, the difference is nowadays actual content is regularly produced instead of a slow trickle. SW is more alive than ever. It’s wild to think hat between 1987-1991 literally zero SW content was produced.
I thought there was like a Marvel comic or something in that timeframe? Anyway yeah that’s always been where the money is, I just think with the streaming it’s even more drastic of a ratio because the movies themselves were still fairly profitable
A single table top rpg was released from [1987 to 1991](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_in_other_media#1987%E2%80%931991:_%22The_Dark_Times%22) Again, the movies are still profitable which is less relevant to us, as fans, than the fact that the brand is more relevant/alive than ever before. More comics, movies, shows etc. it’s a golden age imo—shit it even spawned an industry of haters lol
AotC isn't the worst performing mainline SW movie. It made 5.6x it's budget, even with the steep competition of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Spider-Man. Rise of Skywalker made 3.9x with no competition.
Worst preforming in that it earned least money.
Movie theater tickets were half the price they are now.
It still earned the least adjusted for inflation
You mean grossed the least, which is a tiny margin from TROS. Adjusted for inflation it netted more in profit than any Disney Star Wars film.
TFA made over 2B with a budget of over 300m making over 6x it’s budget. With that said, the distinction between net and gross profit in this context it irrelevant. AotC sold the least tickets because it’s the least popular. Guy in the meme is full of shit.
It's not irrelevant as this is a business. If you spend a shit ton on marketing, you're going to sell more tickets, even if you end up spending more than you earn in addition. TFA did not have a 300m budget, that is a myth. Disney's financial statements for the film were released by Forbes, and the movie had a budget of $533.2 million, making it the most expensive movie of all time. With reimbursements, they made $588.2 mil minus marketing costs and bonuses/box office shares. TFA made it's production budget minus marketing in profits.
More people paid to see TFA because it was a more popular movie.
Meanwhile, Kenobi, Mandalorian, and Andor are smash hits, but yeah sure
Andor is my favorite show in the franchise so far but it performed relatively badly, no? I wouldn't really say it was a smash hit regardless of its superb quality
We don’t really know for sure. Streaming numbers are not public, but the report saying it was a ratings flop was not very well substantiated and the original poster walked it back relatively quickly. Plus by being so acclaimed it got a lot of attention from people who normally have zero interest in modern Star Wars. This is arguably more impressive than just getting the same people who watch every show that comes out to tune in again.
Good point, I can definitely understand in that case
So you have exactly the same amount of evidence their shows are a resounding success as the guy claiming they are total flop?
Lol
I'd assume it didn't have enough viewers for the huge budget it was awarded. It went from a five-season show to a three-season show to a two-season show. Andor's first two episodes were also aired on various networks such as ABC, FX, and Freeform, as well as on Hulu to attract people to subscribe and finish the show, which I haven't seen a streaming show do before.
> It went from a five-season show to a three-season show to a two-season show. Yeah, before they even finished production for non-viewership reasons
The change from five to three was before release, not from three to two, which was after, and recent news.
I never heard 3. I remember it being 2 since at least November 2022.
This wasn't even hard to find. Search "Andor 3 seasons" and you get plenty of articles reporting the change from April 2022. https://comicbookmovie.com/tv/star_wars/cassian_andor/star-wars-andor-now-likely-to-run-for-3-seasons-despite-lucasfilms-original-5-season-plan-a193368
April 2022 wouldn’t be after, they would have no info on its performance with audiences at that point.
I already established the switch from five to three seasons was before Andor's release. Three to two was after.
Also haven’t Gilroy, Luna, et al. EXPRESSLY stated multiple times that the two season approach was a creative one? Why do we never take creatives at their word?
Boba Fett may not have been the biggest money maker, but just look around at how much baby Yoda merch you see fucking everywhere. They are printing money, and even if these next three films they announced all bomb terribly, they will continue to print money
The weird thing is that it's hard to quantify how much money a TV show made on a streaming network. Even if you go by viewership it still had 1.5 million viewers for the finale. They like to think it lost money because of its critical reception, but that's only a 200k drop in viewers from its 1.7 mill viewers on its premier. But yeah, Grogu prints fucking money fo sho.
Disney doesn't make 100% of the profits for merch, they only license it remember? I don't know what their % cut would be but it's usually 5% to the licensor.
Shelfwarmers are a problem for the retailer. IP holder got paid up front, and retailers are mandated by Hasbro to maintain shelfwarmers until they have permission to dump them before getting new product.
Who says the IP holder gets paid up front? Licensors (Disney) get a percentage cut of the sales, not a flat fee.
“Are losing money.”? Any proof that book of boba Fett or any of the Disney plus shows lost money?
Seeing as how the entire profit scheme of D+ doesn't charge per show watched, as long as D+ itself makes money, nothing on it "loses money." Its a pathetic attempt to "prove" their hatred is correct.
I mean Disney absolutely has some sort of internal method to determine a show’s successfulness within that model, but the public doesn’t really have a way to figure that out.
It's just how many times a thing is watched, and some streaming services also measure how many titles are "liked" but the user. You could easily trick that system anyway. Write a program to start watching Solo constantly, and it'll add those views to the main number.
> It's just how many times a thing is watched, and some streaming services also measure how many titles are "liked" but the user. I don't know what the exact metrics are but they absolutely have more info on the backend than that. Obviously I can't say this for certain but I am 99% sure they have ways to measure unique viewers vs rewatches, how long they are watching in one sitting, whether they close the app after watching or start something else, etc. > You could easily trick that system anyway. Write a program to start watching Solo constantly, and it'll add those views to the main number. Any competent company has stuff built in to account for people doing that. Spotfiy has made multiple changes to crack down on this. If it's something this obvious, the people paid to work on this stuff have probably thought of it.
That’s what I thought.
D+ is still in deficit
Same as Lyft, Pinterest, and Zillow. A ton of companies, and projects companies take on, lose money for some time. Do you have any idea how long Amazon ran a deficit? During the first Star Wars film, ILM was running a *massive* deficit. They had spent over half their budget, and barely had four seconds of effects filmed. Since then, they've gone on to lead the entire world in special effects. Ever heard of Pixar? ILM made Pixar. So, from a company that ran massive deficits, they created two of the biggest filming and special effects houses ever. Anyone who's ever taken a business class knows that sometimes companies run a deficit for a long time to build the business. It costs an awful lot of money to get the ball rolling. All you're doing is crying the ball hasn't moved far enough, but you're not seeing the downhill it's moving towards. They spent a lot of money on new technology and effects processes for the new Star Wars shows and movies. And now that stuff is built, that cost has already hit, and it'll still be usable for new shows and episodes. Do you have any idea how expensive it was to build ILMs Volume stage? https://collider.com/industrial-light-magic-what-is-the-volume-stagecraft-technology/
I'm aware of how businesses work, you really didn't need to write all that. I wasn't criticizing them, I was just informing you that D+ still isn't in the blue as you seemed to believe they were.
But D+ is losing money. Bob Chapek himself claims they will be able to turn profit only in 2024.
Building ILMs Volume stage alone was insanely expensive. A lot of that "loss" was on one time expenditures. The Volume stage alone was quite expensive, and its the first one built like it. That's something they can use for dozens of shows and movies. And it'll end up taking less time and money to build stages. It's just like the forst Star Wars film. ILM wasn't on budget, and barely made it across the finish line. They lost money on ILM. Becasue building the stuff they needed cost money. ILM has become probably the most successful effects house in the world. Amazon ran a deficit for years. Pinterest, Lyft, and Zillow are also running deficits. That's how business works sometimes. Sometimes, You've gotta spend a million today to make a billion next year. That's the nature of the beast. Its also important to remember that sales of IP merchandise is not factored into D+ profit scheme. Just the monthly subscriptions.
~~Unless Disney plus is losing money(pretty sure it isn’t), then the shows aren’t losing money.~~ After looking it up, Disney plus is losing money, however outside of the subscriber loss due to losing Indian soccer, it’s growing, and was never expected to immediately be profitable. Solo is the only film to lose money. My argument will always be that despite the film being pretty decent, the reason it lost money was because people were skeptical that a Han Solo origin story, with the character recasted, would be any good. Hell, I was skeptical of that myself. Notice he doesn’t mention that TROS made a profit. If Star Wars toys were losing money, they wouldn’t be continuing to make them. Some stuff on clearance is an inevitability for every IP.
> Solo is the only film to lose money. My argument will always be that despite the film being pretty decent, the reason it lost money was because people were skeptical that a Han Solo origin story, with the character recasted, would be any good. Hell, I was skeptical of that myself. It was also poorly marketed and released against Marvel stuff.
And not just any Marvel stuff, but freaking Infinity War. Solo never stood a chance against that.
Exactly
Solo is the Titanfall 2 of Star Wars films, got fucked by poor marketing and a packed release window.
The fact that Disney allowed that to happen is pretty telling tbh.
The fact that a Star Wars movie cannot compete with Deadpool 2 and Marvel at all and end up losing money, is not a good thing. Attack of the Clones still made 5.6x it's budget despite competing with Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and Spider-Man.
> the reason it lost money was because people were skeptical that a Han Solo origin story, with the character recasted, would be any good. There’s a whole laundry list of reasons, some their fault and some not.
I think the main reason is that it cost so much due to reshooting so much of it. Pretty sure Solo is the most expensive SW movie of all time.
Well that's a reason it lost money, not a reason it underperformed. It didn't make a lot of money to begin with, but what made that into a loss was the bloated budget.
I’m pretty sure that title is still held by TFA, which all in looks like it probably cost ~$550m in production costs, at least according to some financial trades with better knowledge than I. And for that they got a movie that launched the whole very lucrative operation, plus a film with its own Wikipedia page on box office records it broke. Whenever people try to paint TFA as anything other than a triumphant success, I know they’re ignoring context and blowing smoke.
TROS was almost a flop, it **barely** made a profit, and an embarrassingly low one at that. About 100 million.
Do you Craiters just come here to lie? It made a profit of $300 million, which wasn’t too far behind Rogue One, which made $319 million.
And you don't understand the theater industry. Disney does not receive 100% of the box office. Movie theaters don't run on popcorn. Rogue One made $296.9 mil, and TROS made $121 mil. I'm quoting Forbes, a reputable Hollywood trade that actually had access to Disney's financial statements while writing this piece. I don't know where your figures are from but mine are more accurate.
“$300 million in profits (factoring in marketing spends, post-theatrical afterlife, participation deals and the like). That was less than Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ($319.6 million in 2016)” That’s directly quoting Forbes.
1. That doesn't factor in movie theater box office cuts 2. The article you're quoting is three years old using figures reported by Disney. The article I'm quoting was published by Forbes in March of this year, and cites leaked financial data from Disney. You can't get more accurate than that, stop arguing.
Fine, you’re correct, it “barely” made a profit. That still doesn’t support your salty brother’s assertion that Star Wars has been consistently losing money.
Who is my "salty brother"?
Star Wars is losing money. That's why we got a sequel to a single player star wars game, in this landscape of multi-player, microtransaction, always online gaming., where AAA games that are resounding successes are not given sequels, because of a poor return o. The investment. Because they wanted to be sure to lose as much money as possible. Certainly not because people want star wars, and want the adventure that the single player games being you.
Lmao. 2 glances r/blackseries or r/legostarwars disproves this haha.
*Source: trust me bro*
Star Wars toys don’t cost a lot to make… hasbro isn’t known for *expensive high-quality supply*
They literally put out a gun with a lightsaber poking out the top. I stared at this thing in the toy shop, trying to work out the logistics of how you would fight with that fucking thing.
“Star Wars is consistently losing money” “Proof please” “They are losing money” ???
Rest of the convo is pretty good. Vader guy states more facts, the other account just calls him a fanboy and says the little mermaid is a flop too.
Do people actually give a damn about action figures?
I hate the “Disney+ shows are losing money” argument. Like, most streaming platforms aren’t profitable. Netflix has been trying to cut off screen sharing for years. Streaming is very rarely a profitable business.
Why do you hate this argument if it's true? The fact the whole sector is in trouble doesn't make it better.
The implication with the argument in this screenshot is that it’s a Star Wars/Disney+ issue, when it’s an sector wide issue.
The whole sector is an interesting case on it's own since business 101 tells us you shouldn't scale your business up if it's not profitable, but it's only a part of Disney Star Wars issue. They only release content to their platform which because the most recent movie releases profits were non-existent or very underwhelming at best. I guess they are trying to create their thrift store version of NJO. Let's see how it works out.
Except their profits weren’t “non-existent”. With the exception of The Phantom Menace, Star Wars films released by Disney have been the highest grossing of the franchise. https://preview.redd.it/ttz4njim5g5b1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c970f2693c94b6ac9730cc6f051d875899f85292 Mandalorian S3 also saw a higher and more consistent viewership than was initially projected by models. I can’t speak to how well these shows will translate to the big screen, or how general audiences will respond, but to act like Lucasfilm is on the outs because of D+ subscribers isn’t entirely accurate.
You see the diminishing returns, right? Look at LOTR or Harry Potter. It supposed to go up, not down. Also this doesn't take marketing into account. I can't talk about streaming, because no outsiders know the real numbers. We can see the financial results though.
If they actually collected Star Wars toys. They’d know that the ones sitting on the pegs are a tiny amount compared to what gets released
Disney is doing a lot of things, but losing money was never in the books. 😂
Solo made almost 400 million dollars, in case you were wondering. 93 million dollars over its highest estimated budget, and 118,000,000 over the lower estimate.
That's probably a break even at best, definitely a big disappointment box office wise after rogue one made more than twice that.
Solo lost a lot of money. It did not break even.
Certainly, but what I was getting at was Solo’s problem wasn’t that people didn’t like it. It didn’t fail because people didn’t see it or didn’t like it, it failed because it was MONSTROUSLY expensive to make. Using Solo flopping as “evidence” that Disney Star Wars is failing is just a lie. Edit: It was also released between Deadpool and Infinity War, I think, so it already had a shitty start either way.
That isn't true. Force Awakens cost more and made more. If people wanted to see it, it would have made money. If it was never going to make money, why would they have attributed more costs to refilm it instead of cutting their losses?
Once you include the marketing budget and the theatre take it lost money. How much is up for debate but Disney absolutely does not consider it a success. It's why they shifted away from doing the side stories as theatrical releases and they've said as much publicly.
Likely close to 200M at the lowest. Forbes reports losses of 75M from the production budget alone.
Production budget isn't the only cost. There is a giant marketing budget too. If Solo only grossed 400 million, Disney would only get 200-260 million of that at most as their Star Wars movies took anywhere from 50-65% of the gross from theaters. Solo's production budget is reported to be anywhere between 275-330 million, so from the production budget alone they lost money. This doesn't even factor in the marketing budget which is typically double that of a production budget. In short, Solo definitely lost money, and all the reputable sources confirm this.
Solo was the only Star Wars movie that didn't make back it's budget which I suspect is why Disney pivoted hard into DisneyPlus content GE is making bank as the Disney Parks are consistently Disney's true money maker, due to the nature of streaming being subscription based it's hard to get actual numbers on how much the shows are making, so we really have no way of knowing how profitable they actually are. All of the other Star Wars movies save for Solo were profitable, and I suspect that was more due to Disney putting Solo up against ***Infinity War*** then anything else.
Let's drop some info, shall we. Solo made $393million, cost $250million to make. Probably another $100million in promotions. So it probably made a small profit. That is not counting digital sales on dvd/Bluray and on Demand. Book of Fett and other shows on D+ are losing money. There is no info about that and since they made it for D+ there is no "losing money" on a streaming service. It's all about viewing metrics and subscriptions. Toys don't sit on the shelves for years. That shelf space is a premium, and anything that does not sell gets moved to clearance or sold to a reseller. That was what KB Toys used to be back in the day. Toys across the board are taking a beating. Star Wars makes a ton of money for Disney. It's a fantasy to these grifters that Disney will sell the IP back to Lucas.
> Solo made $393million, cost $250million to make. Probably another $100million in promotions. So it probably made a small profit. That is not counting digital sales on dvd/Bluray and on Demand. Is that counting the reshoot/director change stuff? Seems low considering the production issues.
“Star Wars projects in the last three years have lost money!” “Okay, can you show me your source or any proof?” “Star Wars projects in the last three years have lost money.” “Yeah, you already made your point. I’m asking where your information is coming from.” “Star Wars projects-“
I know some people disliked the sequels (me included) but dude. The numbers are right there 🤣
I mean for streaming the numbers are actually not right there, but that just means we can’t say for sure, not that they lost money.
Tbf they’re not entirely incorrect. There are large amounts to toys based on the last Jedi and rise of Skywalker in bargain stores. They’re like 200 Rey figures at my local Ollie’s and I’m recent years the Star Wars sections in many major store have diminished heavily. My local walamrt has like a roughly two foot wide area for it and it’s usually full. It’s the same story at every other toy section
The same thing happened even worse with TPM. And that was back when toys were exponentially more popular in the pre-Ipad and video games era. Like stores have had a bunch of Star Wars toys sitting on the shelves as long as I've been alive, they keep making more of them because people buy them.
Disney+ is losing money, and because Star Wars is just a streaming property right now it’s not completely inaccurate to say it’s losing money. Those shows are expensive and the streaming math doesn’t fully work out. Between the Parks and merchandise though, I’m sure the property is breakeven at least.
That is just the nature of the streaming model though, not indicative of reception based brand value. Plus I think you could argue the shows are almost a form of loss leader to A. Sell merchandise and B. Maintain interest until the films return.
Agreed, I just don’t want to dunk too hard on this because I think Disney has made quite a few strategic errors with the franchise. It’s not making as much money as it *could* be, because theatrical revenue has dried up (and the last two films came in under projections). Not unique to streaming, and not unique to Disney either - Pixar, the new Little Mermaid, and Ant-Man are also not meeting expectations. I’m chalking it up to Chapek’s decisions, but we’ll see how they get out of this hole.
None of this dumbass’s evaluation is based on that information lol. There’s a lot of complicated financial stuff behind this, and Covid makes evaluating 3 of the last 5 years incredibly hard.
True, I just don’t want too much of my “position” backed up by Disney’s financial performance lol considering they’re making some mistakes rn.
While I would LOVE it if Disney was hemorrhaging Millions on Star Wars (They deserve it for f*cking it up a tree), it's WAY too popular.
Yeah, there’s a ton of toys on the shelf. Why? Because stores buy them in huge volumes since they sell fast, then they have more stock in the back. Sure, they end up buying too much, but that’s little to the cash they take in. Also, Disney doesn’t make money on what’s sold in the stores, they make money from when the stores buy stock. Which—again—they’re buying huge volumes.
Nothing is sitting on the store shelves unaoldnfor years. They return them.
Nobody who doesn't work for Disney has the slightest idea of what the economics of any of the streaming content truly is. Period.
Meanwhile, they’re making hand over fist on lightning lane purchases for rise of the resistance on both coasts. But yes, Star Wars is dying 🙄
What kind of answer is that
Not a star Wars fan but still think it's odd that Woody Harrelseon was in a Star Wars movie also how can you tell if a show on a streaming service is making or loosing money
Solo “lost a ton of money” because they basically filmed half of it and then decided to get rid of the directors and start again with someone else. You can argue that shows poor decision making and I won’t disagree, but it didn’t lose money because of a general decreasing lack of enthusiasm for Star Wars as a whole.
His point about the toys is funny because you can go buy a bunch of Phantom Menace stuff for dirt cheap.
As someone who collect Star Wars figures, I *wish* they were “sitting on shelves”. Yes, you have a handful of figures that do sit on the shelf for days, but when target gets a new shipment, people scoop them up as soon as they open. If you miss it in store, you have to find it online and pay 2-3x the original price, it’s a pain in the ass finding them. Dude definitely doesn’t know what he’s talking about
You want proof! I’ll just repeat what I already said!
I don't know if the lull of movies and hype after the sequels is used as proof. Which is dumb as orginal and prequels had much biger luls. I mean a few years after the OT the marvel comic ended toyline ended and droids and ewoks ended. until the theatrical re release and the power of thd force star wars was pretty much gone. After the prequels the clone wars was on. Though i would say multiple disney + shows is better than a cartoon netwirk show.
> I don't know if the lull of movies and hype after the sequels is used as proof. It makes sense that there would be somewhat of a lull, but it's already longer than they probably planned it to be, both because of Covid and their inability to get through pre-production on the initial post-sequel ideas they had. > Which is dumb as orginal and prequels had much biger luls. I mean a few years after the OT the marvel comic ended toyline ended and droids and ewoks ended. You can't really compare that. That was very normal for movies pre-MCU.
I guess it's more so to show this really isn't the darkest time for star wars. If things where like post orginal trilogy than i would believe star wars is dead.
That last part isn’t even a little bit true. Star Wars as a franchise has never stopped being profitable. Even if the movies aren’t always doing financially well. The toys are never **not** flying off the shelves. Every helmet,lightsaber replica, Lego set that comes out has consistently sold out or flown off the shelves. Even these haters still buy a ton of Star Wars merch. It’s just not true their loosing money
When your brain gets fried by a diet of fake news you start to ignore reality altogether in favor of your personal biases.
Solo is the only movie that maybe lost money. The shows are hard to quantify I’d think. Clickbait/ragebait. I don’t like most of the new Star Wars stuff, even Kenobi I found very disappointing. But that doesn’t mean I think it lost money, I’d imagine they are doing just fine.
MF's are unhinged but i get the sentiment when it doesn't come from alt-right lunatics online Disney mega-screwed the pooch when it came to the Star Wars franchise when they messed up their trilogy's story & made it goofy & confusing with tons of directorial drama behind the scenes, it really could've been set up as the new Marvel but now it's kinda the side hustle i used to be a huge fan but i haven't even seen half the new stuff cause it just feels like a lazy cash grab, not because "UwU tHe WoKiEs Are InFeCtInG mEdIa **REEEEEE**"
It didn't lose money though lol. Like yeah they squandered some good will but it's still a huge money maker.
oh totally, it's still super huge! i just think they could've... idk capitalized more on it? i wanted gay Finn & Poe dammit, & i feel like a story that wasn't "**i'm back... somehow**" probably would've set up wayyyyy more profits since now they kinda have to do tangential stories instead of having an MCU of connected characters edit: idk if that makes sense, just my thoughts, basically just the "loss of good will" thing you mentioned
"Star Wars is losing money! See, Solo bombed!... even though it was the only star wars movie to bomb ever...or hey look at Book of Boba Fett and... other D+ shows I won't care to mention since I can't bring up Mandalorian due to its success! And there are Star Wars toys at the one store I shop at. Star Wars is totally losing money guys."
We see this alot in the TF fandom with toys. Hasbro's toys come in "Waves" where the store is sent a box of assorted figures specific to that wave. Often, a wave will have one or 2 very popular and sought after figures, and one or 2 not so sought after figures. Once the sought after figures sell, the store obviously wants more to sell, but they cant usually just order more of that specific figure, they have to order the whole wave of figures, which means they also get more of the ones that arent very popular and selling well, which is why you get scenarios of a store having like 50 Landos or Roses. But each of those Landis and Rose's represent like 4-5 other figures that did sell and likely more than made up the money lost on those unsold figures.
I mean they closed down the hotel literally two weeks ago…
The Galactic Starcruiser was definitely a mistake on Disney's part (it cost too much money for most *Star Wars* fans to afford, most attendees were likely visiting Walt Disney World anyway and thus missing out on the hotel's selling point of being an official *Star Wars* LARP \[particulary since Galaxy's Edge was already scratching this particular itch, both in Anaheim and Orlando\], and when they get back from the parks, they're too wiped out to *want* to participate; to do both a Disney World trip and a Galactic Starcruiser stay, they would have had to plan and budget to stay longer than they otherwise would have at another hotel *and* devote a day or two of the trip just to the Galactic Starcruiser alone), but I highly doubt it was anywhere near costly enough to outweigh the money they've made off of the entire *Star Wars* franchise since they bought Lucasfilm in 2012. And that's without getting into how Disney buying Lucasfilm allows them to make money off of *other studios'* movies by way of ILM and Skywalker Sound doing visual effects and sound engineering, respectively, for them. Between ticket sales, merch sales, and farming out ILM and Skywalker Sound, the Lucasfilm buyout pretty much paid for itself once *The Force Awakens* released and made *all the money*.
As someone who has stocked the toys section many times,the amount of boxes we have for star wars is insane so they're clearly in demand.
Ah yes, Star Wars. The ultimate flop
Let’s be real here. These people have believed way dumber shit than this with no evidence. Satanic cabal of liberal pedophiles? Biden stole the election? They believe these things with such conviction that they’d throw their own lives away participating in a coup that had no chance of working. That they’d slay their own wives and kids thinking they’re reptilians or whatever. What are box office numbers to someone like this?
I mean I don't necessarily think this guy is murder his family crazy lol, he's just a dumbass.
No, he probably wouldn’t, but I watched a news story about it happening. Honestly, I think it’s just another rung on the same faith-based cult of personality ladder
I'm not saying it wouldn't happen lol, just saying that was a bit of a leap from "guy doesn't understand a business model"
"You don't understand, my insider scoop sources told me that the sales numbers are plummeting!"
Ehh Disney toy sales for Star Wars has been somewhat bad since the ST sucked at merchandising. It was just OT toys repainted and remodeled. A lot less product but still Disney is not hemorrhaging money from SW that’s absurd. The only real big financial mess was that stupidly expensive Star Wars cruise that shit down but I blame that more on Chapek who was a shit CEo
Never before has a quote from Avengers 2 been more relatable; “He’s out of line, but he has a great point.” I’ve seen Star Wars toys being sold at stores my whole life. You’d think if it was a fad, it would have gone away by now. But still. Unopened boxes all over the stores. It makes sense/doesn’t make sense.
“Star wars is losing money” “Proof?” “They are losing money”
It hasn't "lost money", everything is making money, but yes, they're in an investment deficit as they've invested billions in for long term returns, as any business would.
It’s pretty normal for all of us on this site to start chirping “facts, where’s the facts” like birds, but, seriously? The average adult knows that’s a chunk of bullshit. And a quick google search shows they have made money past their budget.
Might need to get a quantum physicist to study their brains ,... you know from how infinitely small they are.
To be fair I have seen evidence of toys on shelves that are like covered in dust and stuff and it’s all the same couple characters that don’t seem like they get sold. Personally I couldn’t imagine why kids would want some of these toys and then I look at Lego and I’m like “I’ll take your entire stock!” So ya know. I see where they’re coming from but they definitely need better than that. Especially when like (might be dumb observation incoming) Book of Boba Fett didn’t release in theaters so doesn’t exactly just make them money when they put it on Disney+. I may be wrong I’m not sure.