Disney's future STAR WARS plans again uncertain

Disney are going into the new decade with a very big and unexpected headache regarding Star Wars. In 2012 Disney purchased Lucasfilm and all its properties (including Star Wars and Indiana Jones) and subsidiaries (including Industrial Light & Magic) from George Lucas for a cool $4 billion. They have since made some solid bank, going into profit on the deal. However, the recent performance of the Star Wars franchise has caused some frantic rethinking of how to handle the property moving forwards.

The first films released under the new regime were extremely successful: The Force Awakens (2015) grossed over $2 billion worldwide, whilst Rogue One (2016), a side-project which Disney were expecting not to top $1 billion, instead made a respectable $1.05 billion at the global box office.

The first signs of problems came with the release of The Last Jedi (2017). The film had a rapturous critical pre-release period, but the post-release response was much more mixed. The film topped out at $1.3 billion, still securing a healthy profit but the $700 million drop from The Force Awakens was a nasty surprise for Disney who'd been projecting a more modest drop and a final gross of $1.5-1.7 billion, more in line with the drop between their first two Avengers films.

Worse was to come with the second Star Wars spin-off movie, Solo (2018). A change of director and extensive reshoots on the film pushed its budget well above $300 million. Lucasfilm, who at one point were hoping to release two to three Star Wars films a year to match Marvel's performance, also refused to listen to theatre chain requests to hold the film back until a December release and insisted on a May release. The result was a box office bomb: Solo grossed $394 million worldwide when it needed well north of $800 million to just break even. The film will eventually make a profit from streaming and media sales, but it's going to take years.

Disney's response was swift. Several additional Star Wars spin-off movies were outright cancelled (such as one about Boba Fett) or moved to television (the long-gestating Obi-Wan Kenobi standalone). It was also decided to bench the franchise for three years, with the next Star Wars movie not expected until December 2022. Disney also tapped Game of Thrones showruiners David Benioff and Dan Weiss to write and direct that movie - expected to be the first in a series in a new (at least to cinema) part of the Star Wars universe (possibly related to Laeta Kalogridis' Knights of the Old Republic script) - following their success at HBO. Last Jedi director Rian Johnson was also attached to write and potentially direct a new trilogy, but after The Last Jedi's performance Johnson's new project appears to have been sidelined whilst Lucasfilm reconsidered (Johnson was also due to direct his own stand-alone movie, the successful and well-received Knives Out).

A (potentially ill-advised) $200 million payday from Netflix led Benioff and Weis (still smarting from the poor reception to the ending of Game of Thrones) to quit Star Wars in October, abruptly leaving Disney without a film for release in three years' time. This has left Disney's future plans in tatters and they are now reconsidering their options.

At the same time, The Rise of Skywalker has launched to a further disappointing set of financial results. Eight days into release, The Rise of Skywalker is batting far below The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. It is doing much better than Solo (thankfully) and tracking ever so slightly higher than Rogue One. Assuming the same kind of long tail holds up, The Rise of Skywalker should take home around $1-1.1 billion at the end of its run, a comfortable profit (the break-even point for the film is estimated at $825 million). A sharp drop-off in performance could reduce that significantly, and at much below $900 million Disney will be left with some very big, awkward questions to consider going forwards.

At the moment, the only Star Wars movie officially still in development is the first in Rian Johnson's trilogy, which appears to have originally been scheduled for 2023. Whether this will remain the case or be moved up to the 2022 slot is unclear. This would be tight if Johnson indeed (as he is apparently considering) does another smaller-scale film before returning to the Galaxy Far Far Away. Disney will have to start pulling triggers soon if it does want to get a Star Wars movie on screen for 2022, and will now be asking how much money they want to invest in it.

All of that said, Star Wars does seem to be doing well in the first stage of a hard pivot towards television. The Mandalorian, the first live-action Star Wars show, has been a critical and commercial success on Disney+ and helped drive the new streaming service's boisterous launch in the United States (it arrives in Europe, including the UK, in the spring). A second season of The Mandalorian is already in production and two further Star Wars TV shows are in development, one focusing on the morally dubious Rebel intelligence agent Cassian Andor from Rogue One and the re-tooled Obi-Wan project, with Ewan McGregor already on board.

With Star Wars no longer annihilating the box office as it used to, the future for George Lucas's franchise may be on the small screen rather than the large.

Note: a modern tentpole AAA movie needs to make approximately 300% of its production budget to break even, once marketing, advertising and third-party costs are factored in.

Star Wars: Solo

Han and Qi'ra are two slum-rats living in the industrial hellhole that is Corellia, a planet whose proud people have been reluctantly turned into shipbuilders for the Galactic Empire. Han manages to escape, but vows to return one day to save the woman he loves. Three years later he's been bounced from the Imperial Academy, served as a grunt in a confusing war and then defected to join a criminal gang looking for a big score. Han still wants to get home, but first he needs a crew, a ship and a co-pilot.

In 1972, during the shooting of his second feature film, American Graffiti, George Lucas turned to his young lead actor Ron Howard and told him about the plans he had to make an exciting, Buck Rogers-riffing space opera franchise, a story of rip-roaring space adventures with scoundrels as heroes, blasters and lots of action. Forty-six years later, in a plot twist few could have seen coming, Ron Howard finally made that film.

Solo: A Star Wars Story is certainly not the best Star Wars movie, but it may be the purest. This is a film about a roguish hero who sets out on a quest to pull off a heist to get the girl and it all goes a bit sideways and he learns some lessons and the audience has a huge amount of fun along the way. This is Star Wars with an alternate take on the hero's journey, without the space wizards or magic or laser swords or prophecies, but plenty of blasters, quips and explosions. It's also a surprising Star Wars movie: almost any nerf herder who's seen the Empire Strike Back incarnation of Han Solo could write a version of this movie which was safer, duller and very predictable. It fell to the movie's bizarre gestation period (including a change of directors two-thirds of the way through production) and formidable writing team (including Lawrence Kasdan making his farewell to the franchise that made his name) to turn it into a more surprising and interesting beast.

Solo is relentless. It's a film that lands with a massive bang - a chase through the tunnels of Corellia - and then does not let up for over two hours. Set piece after set piece rains down on the viewer, but the Kasdan team and the directors (I'm not even going to guess who directed what scenes here) keep the movie buoyant, not allowing it to get too bogged down in exposition. Dialogue sparkles and the action is very well-handled, with the fights and chases being easy to follow. There's a surprising physicality to the film, with a reliance on actual stunts and sets rather than CGI, which is good to see. The fast-moving flow of the film also sometimes masks some dubious plot twists - one coincidental meeting is so far beyond implausible it's not even remotely credible, but hey, the Force or something - but it's not like Star Wars hasn't had a few of those before.

There's also a fortunately strong reliance on the actors. Alden Ehrenreich won't be nominated for an Oscar, but is mostly effective at channelling the spirit of Harrison Ford (and he's better at doing that than trying to do an outright imitation), albeit a younger and even more cocksure version. Emilia Clarke is great as his love interest Qi'ra, and the movie takes her character in a very surprising (and welcome) direction that goes beyond being just a motivational force for Han's journey. But the real plaudits will be awarded to Woody Harrelson, whose grizzled scoundrel-mentor character of Beckett is way more Han than Han himself, and particularly Donald Glover. His take on Lando Calrissian is the highlight of the film, with formidable comic timing, surprising emotional depth and a performance that channels the spirit of a pre-1980 Billy Dee Williams. Even better, Lando isn't allowed to be too dominant a force in the movie: he has his role to play and departs once that is done. Paul Bettany also has a small but significant role as the film's erstwhile antagonist, a criminal overlord who first Beckett and then Han get indebted to and have to pull off a dangerous heist to appease.

Hardcore Star Wars fans will also enjoy the film for its numerous call-outs to the defunct Expanded Universe (particularly a nod to the Maw Installation and the dangerous approach to Kessel) and one particular moment that will blindside the 90% of the audience who hasn't seen The Clone Wars or Star Wars: Rebels, leaving the other 10% feeling particularly smug as they nod to one another across the cinema and say, "Ah, of course" in a probably insufferable manner. After seeing the Marvel Cinematic Universe go to some lengths to avoid mentioning its TV spin-offs as canon in the films, seeing Star Wars just breezily and casually do it in the most unexpected manner possible is terrific, if extremely geeky. More casual Star Wars fans will appreciate the nods to other Star Wars films and stories (C3-PO asks a question in The Empire Strikes Back which never gets answered, but it does here), with the film having some fun in giving us very brief answers to questions that no-one ever asked ("Where did Han Solo get his blaster?") but occasionally getting rather silly in giving more in-depth answers to questions no-one ever asked ("Where did Han Solo's name come from?").

The movie does have several significant flaws, however. The first is that towards the end of the movie it goes a bit too obviously in the direction of sequel-bait. Solo is directed towards a new mission, several side-characters are revealed to have unexpected agendas and a new villain is unveiled. With rumours circulating that Disney are considering two sequels to this movie, they clearly leave enough on the deck to facilitate that. However, the film does hit most of the beats you expect and if those sequels don't happen - Solo's incredibly low-key release, mixed word of mouth and the massive juggernaut of Infinity War still commanding the box office could result in this being one of the lowest-grossing Star Wars movies to date - there's enough closure here not to make the absence of a sequel hurt too much (they can also rather cleverly tie those elements into the Obi-Wan movie instead, if necessary). The second problem is that the movie is definitely too long. This film works best as a pulpy space adventure, a rip-roaring, fast-paced adventure. The two hour-and-ten-minute run time isn't entirely compatible with that and the film does feel like a set piece or two could have been yanked out to get this movie down to a brisker ninety minutes or so.

For a film with as tortured a development process as this one, Solo: A Star Wars Story (****) ends up being surprisingly focused and enjoyable, with great performances and a fun storyline that isn't as predictable as you'd think. Of the new generation Star Wars films, this one views with The Force Awakens as the best: The Force Awakens is better-cast with a far stronger villain, but Solo is far less predictable and manages more genuine surprises. The movie is on general release now.

Jon Favreau reveals more about the live-action STAR WARS TV show

Jon Favreau has been helping publicise the new Star Wars movie, Solo (in which he voices an alien creature), and has taken time to talk about the new live-action TV series he is helming for Disney's new streaming service.

According to Favreau, the new Star Wars series will take place seven years after the events of Return of the Jedi and twenty-three years before the events of The Force Awakens. The series will draw on some of the CG technology pioneered by his movie The Jungle Book to depict truly unusual and weird aliens.

Half of the first season for the show has been written already. Disney are hoping to use the show (alongside an unspecified Marvel Cinematic Universe project) to launch their new streaming service in late 2019.

Trailer for the STAR WARS: SOLO trailer

Because we can't just have the trailer any more, Lucasfilm have released a trailer for the first trailer for Star Wars: Solo, their spin-off prequel movie about the young adventures of Han Solo.

Looks okay. We'll find out more tomorrow, apparently, when we get the full trailer.