This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Sequel Trilogy Failed Plans and How Netflixs Christmas Gift Will Affect Other Streamers

Happy Sunday, and welcome back to my weekly rant called 'This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away'. There was no shortage of things to talk about last week, but today, it's going to be a slightly slower edition. As always, thanks for stopping by, and share the joy with your loved ones if you enjoy it! Today, we'll discuss Star Wars sequel trilogy plans and how Netflix's big viewership data dump could affect the Streaming Wars.



This past week has been the traditional busy time where everyone is trying to get their things in order before the holiday break, and that also happened to me. So many things to do, so little sleep. But I'm on the other side now, so hopefully, you'll be soon too. Looking ahead, we have a few days before Christmas Day with a ton of new stuff, from Zack Snyder's Star Wars wannabe Rebel Moon (which is getting destroyed by early reviews) to the event of the month for the Star Wars News Net staff: the release of the Percy Jackson series on Disney Plus.



For some reason, there are a lot of Percy Jackson fans in our crew, and they are all eagerly waiting for the release of the new show. Meanwhile, I'm playing The Grinch now and have a bet against them, in which I argue this show will be a giant viewership flop for Disney Plus. Who'll be right? Let me know your thoughts! Allow me now to plug my Wonka review on our sister site MovieNewsNet.com, and let us begin talking some Star Wars!


<h2>Three Things That May Have Flown Casual</h2>

• So much Ahsoka: Remember those playful social media videos that Eman Esfandi posted to the official Star Wars Twitter account? Well, apparently they were at the Lucasfilm offices to do some interviews with StarWars.com's Kristin Baver. They also appeared at LA Comic-Con last weekend. Hayden Christensen also did a pretty cool interview with Entertainment Weekly. And speaking of Anakin, Charlie Hunnam revealed he came oh-so-close to playing him in Attack of the Clones!
• The Mandalorian is now available on physical media, and they celebrated it by posting a short clip from one of the behind-the-scenes featurettes included in it. Why would they still have making-of footage from the 2019 season that did not see the light of day until now? A good question, for another time...
• Hasbro, after laying off 1,100 employees, revealed new prequel trilogy-inspired figures from their prime lines.

(L-R): Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi) and Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) in Lucasfilm's STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. &amp; TM. All Rights Reserved.



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<h2>Star Wars Quote of the Week</h2>

On the off chance you missed the rivers of ink that were spilled on this on social media over the past few days, that was Adam Driver talking about how Ben Solo's redemption was never a part of the arc he was pitched for Kylo Ren when he signed on to do The Force Awakens (which turns eight tomorrow) 10 years ago. My first reaction? Well, duh.



We discussed this at length in Thursday's episode of SWNN Live!, which I joined as well, so feel free to give that a listen. In that discussion, we basically reached the conclusion that the idea of having a plan for the entire sequel trilogy was deemed pointless once Carrie Fisher passed away in December 2016. That was the catalyst that changed everything, because even if Rian Johnson (who turns 50 today!) wrote The Last Jedi (which celebrated its 6th anniversary on Friday!), most of his ideas still were a continuation of what JJ had set up -- especially for Kylo Ren (which Driver admitted), Rey, and Luke.



But Leia was going to be the anchor character of Episode IX from the beginning, which is why Fisher's passing caused even more headaches at Lucasfilm than usual. They were forced back to the drawing board and brought in Chris Terrio and JJ Abrams to wrap up the trilogy in any way they could.







The topic of the overall plan for the sequel trilogy will be debated forever, though, and even if we now know it would have never worked unless they were willing to recast the character, it was indeed an awkward place to start from. Not because of the lack of plan, which I would argue worked great for The Last Jedi (as it did for the original trilogy back in the day), but because of the messiness it showed behind the scenes.



Go all the way back to 2012, when Michael Arndt was announced to have been working on the sequel trilogy and writing Episode VII. Arndt had apparently been laying out a story for the new trilogy months before Disney bought Lucasfilm. Then, in 2013, the first crack appeared: Arndt was replaced after Lucasfilm was not satisfied with what he was doing (who knows what that was), his plan was scrapped, and JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan boarded the project. Disney had already announced a 2015 date for the movie, and between delaying it to figure out what to do with the trilogy, or doing it on the fly with a different writer-director doing each film, they opted for the latter.



Lighting didn't strike twice, though. The Force Awakens was a giant success even if Abrams and Kasdan put it together between late summer 2013 and December 2015, an impossible-to-meet deadline for a project of this size. Then, when Kathy Kennedy asked Abrams to do it again in late summer 2017 (targeting December 2019), it was too much to handle. I may not like The Rise of Skywalker, but I will admit it had some pretty cool moments -- most of them featuring Ben Solo.







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<h2>The Streaming Wars Are Over, It's Now a Netflix Empire</h2>


It was 10 years ago that Netflix launched the streaming era of Hollywood with the release of their first original series, House of Cards. The possibilities for an industry that had, up until that point, relied on ad breaks to create TV hits, quickly opened up. Game of Thrones was on the rise, Breaking Bad was at its highest points, and the era of peak TV was nascent. Today, that era is practically over, and after three years of Streaming Wars, Netflix is one Battle of Jakku away from obliterating the competition. This week, they have planted a new flag.



If you've been loosely following the ins and outs of the Hollywood strikes over the summer, you may have heard that one of the big contention points was around the issue of streaming data transparency. The actors and writers want to know how many people are watching the shows and movies they are creating, whereas the big corporations want to hide that away -- for a variety of reasons that range from not telling Wall Street how much money they are pouring into titles that generate no viewership, to maximizing their leverage in talent negotiations.



The studios finally conceded to allowing the guilds a peek behind the curtain under strict, NDA'd circumstances. Just a few days after SAG-AFTRA ratified their support behind the new contract with the AMPTP, Netflix surprised everyone in the business when they released an Excel file that contains the total hours viewed for 18,000+ of their titles in the first half of 2023. That includes original series and movies, but also licensed content from other platforms and studios.







While it's not really the place to dissect the data dump, for those curious, the highest-watched series of the first half 2023 on Netflix was The Night Agent, with 812M hours watched globally. Ginny &amp; Georgia season 2 is behind with 665M hours. The most watched movies of January-June 2023 were The Mother with 250M hours (at #14) and Luther: The Fallen Son (210M, #20).



But today, I'm more interested in what this means for the streaming landscape in general. Netflix said in its press release that they will be doing data dumps like this twice a year from now on, and its co-CEO Ted Sarandos went on Matt Belloni's podcast The Town to discuss the reasons why they decided to do it. He said it was because they had nothing to hide, and that they thought the secrecy was starting to work against them and alienate creators.



The question now is: Will others follow? Was Bob Iger taken aback by this decision and might reconsider opening up their books so they can justify some of the decisions they've had to make, like removing Willow from Disney Plus because nobody was watching it? Will they try to surpass Netflix in their transparency and release an even more detailed report?



As I've discussed in this space before, Disney started opening up about some of its viewership numbers earlier this year, when they revealed the number of views that Ahsoka, and later titles like Elemental or The Little Mermaid, got in the first few days of release on Disney Plus. It's definitely a similar trajectory to what Netflix had started a few years ago when they revealed their top 10 most watched titles on the platform from week to week.







But Disney's viewership reports are a far cry from what Netflix did this week. They are highly adjusted to tell the world exactly the message they want out, rather than letting them be the judge. An example: Ahsoka's premiere was announced to have generated 14M views over its first five days, becoming the highest-watched show on Disney Plus that week. Well, duh. But then, when Loki came out, the press release revealed 10.9M views over the first three days, becoming the second biggest premiere of the year behind The Mandalorian season 3. But where does Ahsoka's premiere fall into that? And where does it land in the overall chart for the year?



I was pleasantly surprised by Netflix's move, and in an industry where they've been the driving force for a decade now, I do believe there's hope that other streamers will follow. But when will that happen? Let's take Ahsoka, for instance. The decision on its renewal has not been made yet, and it likely depends on a variety of factors. Revealing the show's viewership will inevitably condition the audience to think one way or another. If it was a huge hit for Disney Plus, it will become the narrative used by fans on social media that the stars will use to lobby Lucasfilm. If it was a flop, and it gets renewed, then it will look like Dave Filoni is playing favorites whenever the next Star Wars show with decent numbers does not move forward.



At the same time, that's also why they have a marketing department and why they can, at this point, justify any decision with their plans at large. If it gets renewed, regardless of its viewership, it will be because the story is needed to set up Dave's feature film. If not, then it's because they think they can continue with that story without spending two years on that show -- or whatever they come up with.



I really hope Disney joins the transparency party sooner rather than later, and we get some clarity. To me, the big question is how much people are watching Disney Plus' original content versus using Disney Plus to entertain their kids or watch movies they didn't catch in theaters months ago.







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<h2>Jocasta Nu's Reading List</h2>

• Star Wars News Net: The new issue of Star Wars: Insider is out and Aled Morgan has a quick overview of what to expect from it. Check it out!
• CBR: The High Republic is coming to live-action Star Wars storytelling, and Anna Cate Jones thinks its main villain, the Nihil, should stay with us for the long haul.
• Screen Rant: In The Book of Boba Fett, we learned that Grogu would not be training under Luke after all, returning to Mando instead. Corey Larson argues here that it was the right call, and that they should pay it off much later!
• MovieWeb: With Daisy Ridley's Rey rebuilding the Jedi Order in the upcoming feature film, there's been a lot of speculation about who should be in her academy. Kyle Kruske here put together a list of 10 different candidates to appear in the film, whether it's as trainees at the academy, or elsewhere.
• Entertainment Weekly: When putting together a list of the 20 best episodes of TV this year, the EW staff decided to include Ahsoka's 'Shadow Warrior'. Notice that even though it's #2, the list is alphabetically ordered. Nice mentions in that list too, which tried to pick one episode per show.

What did you think of the latest edition of “This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away”? Let me know your thoughts and suggestions down below in the comment section. You can also send them, or reach out with any information tips, directly via our Contact page.



Have a great week!



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