Today is the global rollout for the early access of Star Wars Outlaws. In the US early access begins at midnight on the East Coast and 9 pm on the West Coast. Other time zones accordingly.
In Europe early access begins at 23:00 local time in the UK and 24:00 (midnight) in Central Europe.
In Australia you can play earlier than in other parts of the world, early access begins also at midnight local time, which means Aussie fans can already play this game (it’s 4:45 am in Sydney as I write this).
So the US / America is one of the last territories to get access to the game, expect spoilers if you use social media.
The review embargo was lifted earlier today and most reviews by YouTube gaming channels that matter (i.e. who I think just focus on the game itself, not some agendas or politics, channels like ACG, Mortismal Gaming etc) are mostly positive, virtually all reviews say Outlaws 100% nails that Star Wars feeling and that the open world feels very alive, some are not as much in love with the stealth focus in this game, but most reviews I watched gave it something in the range of 7 up all the way to 9 out of ten. Only one reviewer (Youtuber MrMattyPlays) absolutely hated his experience. Mainstream gaming websites gave outlaws something in the 7-8 range as well. But I never read reviews by them anymore and just ignore them entirely.
I have pre-ordered the gold edition, I will play the game in a little more than three hours from now. I guess I’ll sleep again next week then. Expect a full review on JTA once I have fully finished the game. So probably over the weekend or maybe early next week. Outlaws is apparently a much leaner game than previous open world efforts by Ubisoft (looking at Assassin’s Creed Valhalla here), if you beeline the main campaign you can finish the game in something like 15-20 hours, a full run where you do everything will of course take considerably longer, probably something in the 50 hour range.
Did you pre-order either the gold or ultimate edition to get early access? Will you buy the game at all once it’s in general release come Friday?
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Deadline just released an exclusive article about the cancellation of The Acolyte. With Deadline being a reputable Hollywood trade magazine with actual industry sources there is zero doubt about the veracity of their report. The least watched live action Star Wars Series on Disney+ ever that cost 180 million to make and which also had the lowest watched Marvel or Star Wars series/season finale on Disney+ ever (less viewers than Ms Marvel even) will not get a second season. As reported in my Nielsen article from a few days ago The Acolyte series finale had not even one quarter of the audience of The Mandalorian season 2 finale and performed worse than the Ms Marvel series finale even, which is a new absolute low point. An overwhelming number of fans ignored the series and refused to watch it. News of the cancellation breaks mere days after Nielsen reported their series finale numbers for The Acolyte, of course internally Disney knew about the viewership weeks ago.
And with that Leslye Headland and The Acolyte will both become obscure footnotes in Star Wars history. The woman who tried to destroy the Jedi and wanted people to root for psychopathic murderers she identified with and considered her “avatar” will never work for Lucasfilm again. And quite frankly – the best Disney could do is to give The Acolyte the Willow treatment and to erase the show from existence or at least to officially label it non canon.
And with that I think we will finally never have to talk about The Acolyte again. Let’s forget about it all. And to the twelve people who wanted a season 2: welcome to the real world!
One final question remains: why does the woman who greenlit both Willow and The Acolyte on Disney+ (two of the worst flops on Disney+) and is reponsible for the massive box office disaster that is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny still have a job?
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Lo and behold, after weeks of absence The Acolyte did manage to enter the Nielsen Streaming Charts for original shows with its last episode. The numbers are however nothing Lucasfilm can be happy about. In fact, the numbers are abysmal. Click through for all the details!
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The D23 studio showcase is happening right now. If there will be any news about upcoming Star Wars movies or shows this is the panel we will get them. Will there be trailers? Will there be announcements for new shows? Will an Acolyte season 2 be announced? I will try to keep you up to date! As of now all we got is a sizzle reel that had about 2 seconds of brand new footage from Andor season 2! And Cassian looks all smart and is either attending one of Mon Mothma’s lavish parties or he’s about to infiltrate a casino. Either way, you have never seen Cassian like this! I do hope Disney will at least give a release date for Andor season 2 that is a bit more specific than “2025”. Click through for more!
Inside this article you will find the Skeleton Crew trailer! A first official poster for the show, some info on Andor season 2 and The Mandalorian & Grogu movie (Din gets a new Razor Crest)!
UPDATE: Andor footage was finally uploaded by someone! Watch it while you can (just click here)!!! Disney is known for taking down these things very quickly! This is mostly a behind the scenes look with Gilroy and some actors talking about the new season. But there’s also some more actual footage towards the end. You see both Krennic and K-2SO in the trailer!
Watch the full sizzle reel on CineGeek’s X account!
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I’ll make it super quick. The Acolyte is not on the top 10 Nielsen Streaming charts, not in the overall top 10, not in the original series top 10, it’s nowhere to be found. In fact, a brand new Star Wars series with an all new episode is now even outperformed by a show which released its currently most recent episode two years ago. A job well done, Leslye Headland and Kathleen Kennedy! You really turned a once successful phenomenon on Disney+ into a bad joke no one is watching. This is with episode 7, the second flashback episode, added. Click through for a short discussion!
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I won’t bore you with all the financial details in this article about Disney’s quarterly earnings, I will focus mostly on everyone’s favorite streaming service: Disney+. Overall Disney beat expectations, total segment operating income increased 19% to now $4.225 billion (Disney’s quarterly income is basically what Hasbro’s total annual gross revenue is). Theme parks are somewhat slowing down because of inflation, classic linear tv is still on the decline. But let’s take a look at Disney+! So click through for more!
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The Lando series is officially dead. If anyone remembers: this series was originally announced in 2020. Alongside other projects like “Rogue Squadron” (giggle), “Rangers of the New Republic” (snort) or “Droids” (huh?!?).
Deadline quotes series director / showrunner Justin Simien who told them the project is not moving forward at Lucasfilm.
Simien said this to Deadline:
“It was pretty developed. There was a Bible. There was concept art. There were scripts. But it just wasn’t meant to be.”
No particular reason was given for the cancellation of the project. Last year it was still said that Glover and his co-writer want to turn the series into a movie instead. No word about that here anymore. And let’s be honest: a Lando movie would tank hard. He’s a supporting character who works in the greater context of a Star Wars movie, but few would be eager to watch his solo adventures. It’s certainly for the best we will not get a Lando solo project.
And Kathleen Kennedy can add one more failed/cancelled project to her impressive list of things she announced which then never happened.
Now all we really wait for is Deadline reporting that Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is livid that sexist and misogynist Disney dared to cancel her Rey movie and how this is an outrage.
If only Lucasfilm had had this kind of foresight they show with the Lando series for The Acolyte…
Leave all the usual funny remarks in the comments section if you feel like it. Maybe someone can post an updated list of Kathleen Kennedy’s Star Wars projects that never materialized.
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I’ll make it quick. Because at this point it really is beating a dead horse. The Acolyte with episode 6 (the Qimir bathing episode) failed to enter the Nielsen charts. Which comes as no surprise, since the show dropped out of the charts after its third episode (week 2). This corroborates Luminate’s all new streaming charts where The Acolyte also dropped out.
House of the Dragon meanwhile has 1,296 million minutes and Amazon’s The Boys is listed with 1,125 million minutes as the #2 original series. Disney has only one real highlight, but it’s not even a Disney+ show, the FX series (for Hulu) The Bear is #1 on the original shows charts (all episodes were released on the same day), this is the second success story for FX/Hulu this year after Shogun. Disney+ proper only has three entries, the usual suspects: Bluey (again, not even a Disney IP), Moana and because of the successful sequel also Inside Out.
It will be interesting to see what subscriber numbers Disney will report for its streaming service in the upcoming earnings report next week.
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We had some leaked images before, but about 4 months before Skeleton Crew will come to Disney+ Lucasfilm is slowly gearing up its marketing efforts for the next Star Wars series. They released a couple of official photos from the show and some basic info. Skeleton Crew was ready for release in 2023 but was delayed because of Bob Iger’s new content strategy, filming ended in January 2023, this has been sitting in the vault for some time already. Click through for the images!
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Last Thursday Hasbro presented their Q2 numbers. Chris Cocks is full of praise of course. Even though consumer products declined by another 20% and as far as partner brands are concerned…. abysmal performance. Click through for a short summary and overview!
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Let’s make it quick. The Acolyte failed to enter the Nielsen charts in week 4, just like last week. This means the big lightsaber battle episode and Qimir reveal interested very, very few people. I talked about it last week what this means for Star Wars and how embarrassing it really is for a once successful and popular franchise. But it all adds up, GI Joe HasLabs utterly wipe the floor with current Star Wars offerings (almost 11k backers now), and now the streaming shows cannot even remotely compete anymore with other genre shows like House of the Dragon (1,047 million minutes) or The Boys (1,179 million minutes). A job well done, Ms Headland and Ms Kennedy!
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Well….
The following Black Series figures were revealed at SDCC by Hasbro:
All items are mainline releases. The Acolyte figures will be released in spring 2025, the other figures will come later this year in the fall. Andor figures will get their pre-order dates later. Everything else will be available for pre-order on Saturday at 5 pm ET.
Maybe it’s time to become a GI Joe Collector.
Click through for the update with additional info and photos!
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When you look at what other action figure toylines have to offer you sometimes wonder if Star Wars survives on nostalgia and being, well “Star Wars” alone, but not because of great products or good value.
The reason I am mentioning all this is the brand new GI Joe Classified HasLab: the Rattler. And when you look at it, what it offers, its features and its price… you begin to wonder if Star Wars fans are just getting ripped off these days and with the remaining collectors even deluding themselves into thinking something like the Cantina is a great thing to have. Click through for more!
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While marketing for Skeleton Crew has not yet started what seems to be an official promo poster / artwork has now been found in a thrift store (of all places), according to someone who posted the photo on X. This is a color version of a metal ingot revealed previously, maybe this will be the official poster for the series.
The theory is that maybe someone who worked on the show sold some of the swag crewmembers usually get when production wraps. Skeleton Crew was ready for release in 2023 already and thus production ended quite a while ago, but Iger decided to delay the release as part of his new Disney+ content strategy, which is why we’ll get the show in November this year.
One noteworthy thing is that Jude Law is absent, unless you count his silhouette walking in the background with the four kids in tow. This may imply the kids truly are the main focus here with Law only being a support character. One would think they would feature the only known actor in this show a bit more prominently.
What do you think? After so many either at best average (Mando S3, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Book of Boba Fett) or outright disastrous (The Acolyte) shows I have doubts Lucasfilm under Kennedy will get a series right that is meant to have kids as main characters, especially when we look at the child characters in previous Disney+ projects. But of course no one will know for sure until release and I will certainly watch the pilot episode.
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UPDATE: Luminate have already released their numbers for week 7 of The Acolyte, i.e. for the series finale. And episode 8 also failed to enter the top 10 Luminate original series like the previous two episodes. The #10 entry on the Luminate charts has 228.5 million minutes viewed (Sausage Party: Foodtopia, which is a sequel series to the movie) which is just embarrassing. The Acolyte must have had less then 228 million minutes watched, maybe even less than 200 million. According to Luminate the finale was watched by maybe as few as 4.4 million people (or even fewer)! In the update I also discuss some statements made by Headland in a Collider interview that reveal she literally considers Qimir aka Smilo Ren as somewhat of a self insert. You find the Luminate update and the interview quotes at the end of the original article!
Well, that escalated rather quickly… while The Acolyte remained in the top 10 Luminate Original Series charts until week 4 and episode 5 and only dropped out when episode 6 was released in week 5, The Acolyte has already dropped out of the top 10 Nielsen original series charts in week 3 with episode 4! The #10 show has 298 million minutes on the Nielsen charts. The Acolyte must have less than that. According to Luminate The Acolyte had 262 million minutes in week 3 (episode 4). Click through for a short commentary.
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It’s finally over… the last ever episode of The Acolyte was released Tuesday night… but Headland’s show ends with a massive middle finger to almost all Star Wars fans. All in all things develop as you’d think they develop, there are no surprises really here. The plot is more than just predictable.
But Headland creates one of the most toxic romances in history (only rivalled by Rey and Kylo Ren) and has the gall to even include a cameo of a certain Jedi we all know… and I do not care about spoilers. The Phantom Menace is more like “The Super Duper Obvious Menace, We’ve Known About For 100 Years” now because at least two members of the high council should know about it all, and knew about it for about a century… which is just laughable. And that other cameo may make some fans even more angry…
There are quite a few things to talk about, none of them pleasant, but Lucasfilm should hear it loud and clear from the normal majority of fans that this is nothing most fans want (in case the lousy ratings do not tell Lucasfilm how a majority of fans reject this). While the two dozen Reylos who now have Oshamir scream on Twitter about how they want a season 2. Anyway, click here or on the banner to read my spoiler review for The Acolyte series finale.
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This week you’ll get yet another pretty short article. Because The Acolyte failed to make the top ten original series Luminate streaming charts for a second week in a row, this time with episode 7, that other flashback episode. Last time the series was on the Luminate charts it had around 220 million viewing minutes, by far the lowest figure for any Star Wars live action series ever – if the numbers will be reflected on the Nielsen charts in a few weeks from now we will know for sure. But week 2 figures agreed very well between the two charts. So it is not unreasonable to assume that we may see very similar trends in upcoming Nielsen streaming charts. Click through for a few comments about this embarrassing performance on the Luminate charts.
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Nielsen have a somewhat erratic release schedule currently, they released their early June numbers earlier this week… and on Friday they already followed up with the numbers for the next week. Whatever… Nielsen have therefore now added The Acolyte episode 3 (the flashback episode about the power of maaaaannyyyyyyyyyy) to their charts. And we can finally compare one full week of The Acolyte on the Luminate Streaming charts to one full week on the Nielsen charts. How do the numbers compare? It’s very interesting! Click through for all the details!
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This is an opinion piece. It’s my opinion. I will try to explain why I think that Hasbro’s HasLab is a scam. I am not saying people who support HasLabs are dumb or idiots, there are very good reasons why collectors would want to have the HasLab offerings, most of which have been good products. What I want to achieve is that we all discuss and debate the very idea of crowdfunding by multibillion dollar toy giants and how Hasbro is pulling the wool over collector’s eyes. So please click through for my opinion piece and let’s all discuss Hasbro’s crowdfunding platform.
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I thought the worst was behind us. Then episode 7 of The Acolyte was released. “Choice” is a travesty. A twisted mirror universe version of Star Wars that now features current era R&B pop songs and I wish I was just joking, but I am NOT.
This is the nadir. It can’t get any worse… Nothing makes sense. This episode, once more all flashback, is just the amended version of episode 3. All the same things happen again… just with a few more Jedi scenes now. And you know why all of this happened? I will spoil it for you right here and now because you won’t believe me anyway. All of this happens because Torbin is really, really, really, REALLY homesick and wants to go back to Coruscant.
I have no words for this. Okay, I have a few words for this. If you want to know what I have to say about this nuclear catastrophe click here or on the banner and read my spoiler review of “Choice”, the single worst piece of Star Wars ever, and I include The Holiday Special here.
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Nielsen have finally released their numbers for early June, which means we now have numbers for The Acolyte. Luminate have their own streaming charts so it will be interesting to see how the two compare. What does Nielsen say about The Acolyte? Click through to find out!
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With only 23 1/2 more hours to go it’s all or, well, much less now. The Cantina currently has 10,337 backers. Greedo will soon be unlocked, probably in the morning hours or even at night, when people on the west coast pull the trigger. But the big question is: will the usual mad dash on the final day be enough to propel the Cantina all the way to 17,000? To achieve this the Cantina needs to almost match the performance of the Ghost, which added 6,827 backers on its last day and successfully unlocked all tiers, but the Cantina had unlocked tier #2 on its penultimate day and easily blast its way past 17k with time to spare on the last day – and the Cantina has not even quite reached tier #1 yet. The Cantina needs 6,663 backers now or not all tiers will be unlocked. And the penultimate day was quite a bit slower than what the Ghost had, roughly 75%. So this could be a close call.
Bite your nails and post your predictions and other thoughts in the comments! This will be the goto HasLab article and thread for the day! Have fun! And remember, it’s just toys.
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This week it will be a very short article. Because The Acolyte has, as expected, dropped out of the Luminate Streaming Charts, it was already a very close call last week. It is no longer among the top 10 most watched original streaming shows.
Other websites may try to run interference for Lucasfilm and claim what a raging success it is and how the fans are the issue, not the show, but the cold hard fact is that The Acolyte is a ratings failure on Disney+. And while we still have to wait for Nielsen chances are that they will also confirm that this is the least watched Star Wars live action series yet. Now, in all fairness, Andor also dropped out of the top 10 Nielsen charts for original shows exactly once. So maybe The Acolyte will manage a comeback like Andor did. But Andor dropped out of the charts during the middle of the season, not close to the season finale. It seems naked Manny Jacinto did nothing for the ratings.
And no, it is not istophobes who refuse to watch it. The show is just not good, it’s horribly written, in parts horribly acted and outright nonsensical when it comes to the character arc and motivations of its main characters Mae and Osha. In addition to that it aims to deconstruct the Jedi and portray them as shady people with terrible secrets who feel so guilty they commit suicide and who act as overbearing space cops in the High Republic. Maybe most just do not like this version of Star Wars. Almost certainly so. And to think Lucasfilm spent $180 million on this…
The Luminate Streaming Charts on Variety, without The Acolyte.
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Earlier today the Vintage Collection collectors successfully funded the Tonnika sisters with a cantina on the side. Which means with a little more than 86 hours still to go TVC collectors can now try to get Hasbro to feed them a few more fis… I mean give them more action figures by reaching more tiers! Only a little less than 8,900 backers to go before everything is unlocked!
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This week’s episode of The Acolyte is the polar opposite of the previous one. Zero action, dialogue only. Sadly, this also means you need good actors, even more sadly, Amandla Stenberg continues to seriously underwhelm as the lead characters in this. And so much hinges on her here. Anyway. In this episode Manny Jacinto (who is actually a good actor) as the newly revealed Sith gives Osha his best sales pitch (the usual routine), while Sol pretends to be clueless but isn’t really… just when this show finally wants to tell us how the Jedi murdered all the poor space witches we fade to black. Why this show has 8 episodes is beyond me, this is at best a 4 part mini series with one hour episodes.
So… there’s not that much to talk about this week, since things were mostly just boring or the same old same old you expect to see and hear when a Sith tries to recruit someone. But of course there are some things worth discussing… like the vague vibe I get they may retcon Darth Plagueis here, if they do I have a feeling many folks may not be so happy about it. So click here or on the banner for my spoiler review of Teach / Corrupt and let’s discuss the latest episode of The Acolyte!
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