This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Star Wars Viewership Data, Disney Possibly Buying a Gaming Company, and Ahsoka Reading Suggestions

Happy Sunday and welcome to the first edition of this new and hopefully recurring series of weekly articles breaking down the last week in the Star Wars galaxy, and our little corner of the Internet we call Star Wars News Net (or SWNN for friends). I am not yet sure what this can become, but I know I love the format of the newsletter, where the writer has a direct connection to the reader, so that's generally the goal here -- only this is not coming to your inboxes yet; maybe in the future if there's interest!



This week marked the return of the Great Void for Star Wars, that space in between shows where we don't really have much going on. Ahsoka has wrapped, and we know Skeleton Crew is coming at some point -- though who knows when. Plus, there is no production going on besides writers writing scripts, and thus there's not a lot to talk about unless news breaks of a new show/movie in development. So we're left with New York Comic-Con news, Minecraft trailers, and Star Wars: Visions manga adaptations. Live-action fans may be about to enter hibernation, but publishing fans are eating well these days. Plus, the High Republic is coming back with Phase III this fall.



But before we get to business, a programming note...

• Ahsoka may have concluded its first-season run, but we're not yet over it. This week, we ran three feature pieces on the show, including Aled's take on the show without having seen Rebels, the latest in the (personal-favorite) series of SWNN Roundtables, where members of the SWNN staff pitched in where season 2 would go next, and the first of several full-season reviews of the Rosario Dawson-led show. This was Jay's review; we have more takes on the series coming soon from more members of our team, some who enjoyed it more and some who didn't connect with it as much. Look forward to that this upcoming week.

<h2>Star Wars, Disney Plus, and Viewership Data</h2>


Here is a detail I haven't seen many outlets fully dissect: Disney Plus is now revealing viewership data. No, it's not a detailed analysis as we get from the box office every weekend, and even every day, but Ahsoka opened the can back in August for Disney to brag about their latest streaming successes. Or at least make it look like they are.



A brief history lesson here: Disney Plus announced a week after the first two episodes of Ahsoka came out in August that Part One had received 14 million views (1 view = minutes watched / total runtime) in its first five days, becoming the highest-streamed title on Disney Plus that week; they made similar announcements after the premieres of The Little Mermaid and Elemental, each of them billed as 'one of the biggest movie premieres ever on Disney Plus' after getting 16M and 26.4M views respectively. Most recently, Loki season 2 was announced as the second-highest season premiere of the year, gathering 10.9M views -- in its first three days.



This is obviously Disney controlling the narrative and the latest example of headlines that are manipulated to the extreme to paint the desired picture. First of all, I still haven't had any press release on Haunted Mansion's Disney Plus numbers hit my inbox, I wonder why that is... Second, Ahsoka Part One may have collected 14M views, but what about Part Two, which was available at the same time? Those numbers are obviously not even comparable. But these Loki season 2 numbers really piqued my interest.







Why change the numbers' window to three days? Obviously, they would have loved to have 'highest premiere of 2023' all over the headlines, but they are claiming that The Mandalorian season 3 holds that. (An interesting bit of information as we look back at the headlines from March.) I see two possible scenarios here. First, viewership declined on days 4 and 5 and it didn't match Ahsoka's 14M views, and claiming your biggest Marvel title on Disney Plus was just the third most-streamed season premiere of the year, out of four high-profile shows, isn't really interesting. That would be the perfect example of adjusting the numbers to hit your narrative, which in a way they're in their right to do, but it also invalidates any attempt at transparency and makes all of the numbers above look like another ad with meaningless information.



The second possibility here is that the numbers did surpass Ahsoka's, but they didn't want to eclipse Dave Filoni's show. If so, I'm unsure what the narrative would be here: Are they afraid to announce that season 2 of a show is getting more viewers than the first season of a different show from a different franchise? Do they not want to overshadow Dave Filoni's baby when he gets the inevitable season 2 announcement on Ahsoka?



What I'm most interested to see now is how they will take it from here. I always thought they'd make an announcement on Loki season 2, because that show was pretty big so they would have big numbers to brag about. But I was most curious about Haunted Mansion, which they didn't even acknowledge (or even give the seemingly appropriate Halloween window it should have probably gotten? A discussion for another time, for sure.), and now my attention shifts towards the next two big shows: Marvel's Echo (supposedly out in January) and Lucasfilm's Skeleton Crew, which I still suspect it will come out in February (I am aware of that copyright document saying it was targeting a January date, but bear in mind it was filed in July and it was a tentative release window; Lucasfilm had declined to comment on the issue of the show's supposed delay into 2024 back when I did a separate story.)



Both of these shows are not on many fans' radars, and I suspect they won't do a lot of business on streaming. Will we get another press release à la Ahsoka by then? I certainly hope so, but I'm not holding my breath. For now, Lucasfilm has surprisingly kept quiet about the numbers on the rest of the season, including the finale and even Part Five, which they were very high on (to the point they even held fan screenings across the world).



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<h2>Bob Iger, Video Games, and the New Disney</h2>


Another big story this week was a Bloomberg profile story on Bob Iger's disastrous return year. Writer Thomas Buckley wrote an extensive and thoughtful piece on how the past few months have really turned Iger into a Hollywood villain and tainted his immaculate reputation. And buried inside that piece, as spotted by Video Games Chronicle, was the fact that Iger's deputies are insisting on Disney acquiring. major video game company like Electronic Arts (EA).



This does not come in a vacuum. Disney is bleeding for money at the moment: their 2023 theatrical slate has been disastrous so far, with only Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 meeting expectations (and barely). They have The Marvels and Wish in the last couple of months of the year, and it's really only the animated feature that could bring some hope to the Magic Kingdom (Nia DaCosta's Marvel film is not getting good tracking numbers and has no stars doing promotional TikTok videos). The streaming business they invested all of their money into is not the pot of gold everyone thought it was, and now that they've pretty much capped the global number of subscribers, all they can do is raise the prices until parents find the strength to tell their kids why they can no longer watch Moana and Frozen on a loop anymore.



But it's been even worse for Iger (and this is no sympathy card). The executive, once praised and beloved by everyone, stuck his foot in his mouth back in July at billionaires' camp to accuse the actors of not being realistic in their demands, before going back to drink cocktails and play pool with his CEO friends next to the lot where each had parked their private jets. And that happened a few months after activist investor Nelson Peltz, who opposed Iger's vision for Disney, bought enough stock for his voice to matter inside the company. He then engaged in a proxy fight to get a seat at the Disney board -- he lost the battle, but won the war, because Iger eventually conceded to his demands. They may sound familiar: a massive reorganization of the company, cutting in content spend, and also putting 7,000 workers on the street.







Iger has since reupped his contract through 2026, but what's old is new again. Peltz is now back, as he strategically leaked to the Wall Street Journal this week, and now owns 1.7 percent of Disney's stock. According to the 'anonymous' leak to the Journal, he intends to ask for 'multiple' seats on the board this time, and, as Puck News speculates, he is likely to launch another proxy fight in the spring if his demands are not met. But what would he ask for now instead of the board seats? Disney is publicly interested in selling off ABC and perhaps even ESPN, is considering all options with regards to acquiring all of Hulu from Universal or selling it, and is desperate for any stream of revenue. It got into gambling during the summer, a side of the business Iger once swore he'd never touch, and is keen on betting on the only thing that continues to bring money to its door: parks.



In September, the company disclosed through a security filing that they will be investing $60 billion in parks and cruises, while they also announced this past week that they will be raising prices (another Chapek-like strategy that Iger would have probably criticized a few years ago; now the tables have turned). But the truth is that parks are doing well, Galactic Starcruisers aside, so they just need to squeeze that juice as much as possible while they figure out how to bring more people to the theaters and on Disney Plus. Selling ABC, a declining asset, seems like a good option, but remember: Bob Iger came from that world, and also, it widens Disney's reach and makes sure they can promote their latest Disney Plus show or Disneyland attraction in their own house. It's more than just advertising money.







And this is where the video game industry comes in. Bob Iger is a buyer, even if the media in this second phase of his at Disney has placed him as a seller. Disney is a company that has a lot of business in so many aspects of the entertainment industry, not just film and TV -- but the ever-rising world of gaming is something they've barely touched yet. And they're not alone, as other Hollywood studios, except for Sony and I guess Warner Bros., have also not engaged in this side of the business. It's only a matter of time, though. Video games are now a bigger part of pop culture than they've ever been, and we're barely scratching the surface.



Disney has the right infrastructure to tackle this industry next. They know a lot about long-term planning with their parks division and even their rich history with animation and are masters of storytelling. Their Star Wars video games perform as well and even better than their streaming content, and the popularity of Insomniac's Spider-Man games is enormous. Can Marvel Studios take advantage of that? James Gunn, on the other side of the fence, has already teased that they will be using games to enhance their overarching story at DC. But of course this also adds so many more layers of complication to the job of CEO of Disney, and also the board. Is this a headache worth having? We'll see. (For a detailed discussion on Hollywood and video games, check out this episode of the podcast The Town from a few months ago.)



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


If all of the above wasn't enough to make your head spin on a Sunday night, here are a few more fascinating write-ups from different sites on the Star Wars franchise.

• The Ringer says the MandoVerse needs a writers' room, and they are not wrong. The most interesting bit about the article is how writer Ben Lindbergh uses Star Wars to make the case. It's a point raised during a recent episode of SWNN Live! and an argument we've been having in our internal chats about the franchise for months. My main takeaway, though, is how the new WGA deal will actually prevent it from happening.
• Screen Rant takes a look at the recent (not-so-new) synopsis for Skeleton Crew and creates an interesting theory: What if the kids didn't come from this galaxy, but rather came from a different one and were lost in our regular Star Wars galaxy?
• Remember that story about a lost X-wing model being put up for auction? Well, it sold for $3.1M! It's always a good day when you buy a new toy, whether you're a billionaire or you think you're overpaying for a $25 Black Series Stormtrooper. (Via The Hollywood Reporter.)
• SWNN's Jay Goodearl makes his argument for a good but definitely not great first season of Ahsoka. More reviews coming soon!

What did you think of the first edition of 'This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away'? Let me know your comments, suggestions, and complaints in the comment section. You can also send them to us directly via our Contact page or by emailing us at starwarsnewsnet@gmail.com. Have a good week!



Note: A previous version of the piece misrepresented the number at which the X-wing model was sold. Apologies to the second-highest bidder!



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