With the year drawing to a close and with things like Ahsoka and The Mandalorian season 3 behind us the question is what is next for Star Wars? We now have some more details about what will be next for Star Wars on Disney+ in 2024 based on an official press release. And there is also some news about the Rey movie (what could very well be the Star Wars version of The Marvels). Click through for the details!
Based on a Disney press release and with additional reporting by reputable leakers like Bespin Bulletin or Making Star Wars we now have a good idea about when to expect new Star Wars on Disney+ in 2024.
First the bad news: Andor season 2, which was originally scheduled for August 2024, will not be released in 2024, it is delayed until 2025. The Hollywood strike can certainly be blamed for this, since filming had not finished when the strikes began.
There will still be two live action Star Wars shows on Disney+ in 2024, however.
The Acolyte is said to have a release in the 2nd quarter of 2024, maybe even delayed until summer of 2024. Whereas The Skeleton Crew, which was originally believed to be a holiday release in 2023, has been pushed back a full year and is now tentatively scheduled for the 2024 holiday season, probably November.
This may be part of Iger’s and Disney’s new strategy to spread out content much more than before and to produce less content overall.
That being said, The Bad Batch season 3 (the final season) is believed to get released in 2024 and possibly even first and maybe even pretty soon, that is, before The Acolyte, early in 2024. Tales of the Jedi also got a second season for some reason and that is also believed to see a 2024 release, but no release date is known.
It will be interesting to see how two Star Wars series not based on pre-existing characters or lore will fare on Disney+ with The Acolyte set in the High Republic Era and only The Skeleton Crew possibly tangentially related to the Mandoverse. My guess is both shows will underperform and maybe, at best, reach Andor season 1 levels of numbers. But we will see.
Set photos and even the basic premise of The Skeleton Crew do not inspire me with much confidence. I am not sure how general Star Wars audiences will receive a series focusing on teens. Even if with Jude Law a sizable actor is part of the ensemble. And The Acolyte will probably fight an uphill battle all the way.
Then there is some news about that Rey movie… it was reported a short while ago that filming will begin in early April 2024. But now a new report has surfaced that says that this is definitely not true and that the script is “not ready yet” and that filming could begin in summer 2024 at the earliest.
My own take on that is that it would be best to just cancel the project altogether. The MCU may somehow survive The Marvels debacle, at least Marvel could make a decent X-Men or Fantastic 4 movie, in theory that is (probably not in practice). Should a Rey movie perform on the same level as The Marvels it may very well kill Star Wars movies for good. Because Star Wars hasn’t all that many things it can fall back on. Unless they make a movie about the Original Trilogy heroes, but who would even want to see that knowing their fates in the sequels? So anything they do would appear to be entirely pointless. Nothing they do would ever amount to anything since all of them are abject failures in the end. The real alternative that I see is a blank slate, start from scratch with the movies, jump forward in time. Forget about the past, kill it if you have to. Since this is what the sequels did in the first place.
And Bob Iger needs to step outside his bubble for a moment and ask himself if he should really let Kathleen Kennedy continue with a sequel to the sequels after her disastrous Indiana Jones 5 movie – that is only NOT the biggest Disney flop of the year because Kevin Feige failed even harder. But the sequels are a trilogy of movies that limped across the finish line, all out of breath, with a confusing mess of a final movie and a Rey Palpatine that appropriated the Skywalker name and who is now “all the Jedi” and the real “Chosen One”, throwing the entire premise and basic foundation of Star Wars overboard. Sequel merchandise is dead, no one wants that. And yet here we go and get yet another movie set in the sequels continuity – with a Rey who will now do what, according to what is now labeled “Legends”, Luke Skywalker was meant to do – and actually did, at least in Legends. Reform the Jedi.
Also, what will the effects of things like The Acolyte and The Skeleton Crew be? Will Star Wars as a brand be enough of a draw to bring audiences in – or will they not be interested because The Acolyte is neither Mandoverse nor based on anything Original or Prequel Trilogy related and The Skeleton Crew is about a bunch of teens lost in space?
Then there is the merchandise angle: Looking at The Skeleton Crew set photo I cannot see wanting to own anything related to that show. Maybe, at best, a Jude Law Jedi action figure. The Acolyte could give us at least a few interesting things, Carrie Anne Moss as a Jedi (or Sith?), Keanu Reeves is rumored to have a guest appearance as well, owning Neo (or John Wick) and Trinity as Jedi/Sith would certainly be fun. But chances are non zero the female main character will be Reva 2.0. I.e. leave many fans entirely cold. But of course it could also be brilliant and surprise us like Andor, but that still has the worst ratings of any live action Star Wars shows by far.
My opinion is that Star Wars on Disney+ is much too fragmented, with too many jumps across the timeline, potentially confusing people with most things set after Return of the Jedi, yet some other things set before A New Hope, but after Revenge of the Sith and with the Acolyte we even go all the way back in time to the High Republic Era, which, btw, according to leaked sales data, has abysmal book sales and can only be labeled a “flop” at this point. With some recent books barely selling 11k copies. Not even one tenth of what the first novel had. I feel a more focused approach would be better with shows that are set in the same era. Because now we have the Mandoverse – and then a whole bunch of unrelated and potentially one off shows that add little to the ongoing narrative.
But what are your thoughts about the Star Wars Disney+ lineup for 2024 with The Acolyte and The Skeleton Crew confirmed as the two new live action series? And the final season of The Bad Batch and a second season of Tales of the Jedi added to the line-up of shows? Are you looking forward to more Star Wars on Disney+ in 2024? Do you think the shows will do fine and become a success? And what are your feelings about a Rey movie that is about the establishment of the new Jedi order? Do you think it will succeed or do you fear it may be the Star Wars version of The Marvels and damage the movie franchise beyond repair maybe? The Marvels will now probably barely make $210 million worldwide, if at all, and not even reach $90 million domestic on a budget that is close to $300 million, plus marketing. How or why Kevin Feige and Kathleen Kennedy are still in power after being responsible for Disney’s worst year at the box office of any movie studio in the history of Hollywood is puzzling. Just a reminder: Disney will lose something like $1.3+ billion with movie flops in 2023. They should try their hardest to turn the ship around, and not go full steam ahead with the iceberg in front of the bow, hoping the Titanic is unsinkable.
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