General Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker News and Rumors Thread

I don't count Josh Trank (because Simon Kinberg was pushing for him until he became a nightmare to work with on the set of Fant4stic, which is really what tanked his career) or Gareth Edwards (because he did play ball when they did the reshoots and was very supportive of the project). But the other two do suggest that there are issues with how Lucasfilm is being managed, in addition to Star Wars being a franchise that has a long and colored history of having troubled productions.

I really think this boils down to the difficulties of creating and maintaining a mega-franchise like this. Everyone wants in on that pie after Marvel did it with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but they're struggling to get to that point, with a big part of that being owed to the fact that Marvel's success was a perfect storm - a lot of standalone movies that did either well or okay-ish followed by a movie that blew expectations at the box office away. This was subsequently followed up with a few risky films exploring lesser-known franchises that eventually succeeded due to brand recognition.

Meanwhile, let's look at the competition.

• The Dark Universe pretty much looks like it's dead on arrival unless Bill Condon's movie can revive interest in the franchise, but it's never going to come close to making Marvel numbers (which is what the studio wants).
• The DCEU is financially successful and definitely has its fanbase in spite of mixed critical reception, but it is suffering from growing pains creatively and the lack of a clear game plan for the setting following Justice League is rather apparent. PR issues and their current inability to deal with them effectively is also a problem here.
• The X-Men series has even bigger problems than DC in that they don't even have anything resembling a cohesive continuity and they clearly don't know what they're doing with the main installments (which by all means should be outdoing the spin-offs by a significant margin and not the other way around) - not to mention that Fantastic Four is a lame duck in their hands yet they're still holding on to the rights out of spite.
• Sony's villain-focused Spider-Man spin-offs are going to tank and make the exact same mistakes that Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 made, primarily because the same dumbass producer who screwed up those two movies is working on it. They'll also likely create a lot of brand confusion that could hurt the Marvel Studios Spider-Man movies, which they make all the money off of without having to do much.
• The Transformers series went from being an incredibly reliable brand for a hit-starved studio to a major underperformer as soon as it tried to take on the whole "cinematic universe" concept, a lot of which has to do with the studio's unwillingness to part with Michael Bay (who they honestly should have let leave prior to starting production on the third film).
• The LEGO Cinematic Universe, the MonsterVerse, and The Conjuring series and its spin-offs (all from Warner Brothers) seem to be coming along just fine, but so far these are the exceptions and not the rules.

...And that brings us to Star Wars. So far, both films that have been made under Disney were met with acclaim and did incredibly well at the box office. There are high expectations to keep that level of success up and a lot of pressure for all parties involved to keep making successful movies - again, with a franchise that's notoriously troubled to make. I'd be antsy too if I took on a project of that size.

 

Paramount is pretty screwed no matter if they have J. J. making a movie for them or not, so I think it hardly matters in the long run.

 

STB was great! Unfortunately, for whatever reason, it didn't do that well. Looks like the Kelvin movie series is dead, which is a bummer.