Where do you want to see Star Wars go after the Sequel Trilogy?

Personally...I think cinema trilogies are on weakened legs. The entire film industry itself is buckling all through it. The folks I know in the industry have already swiveled a lot of their work to serial streaming show support. They still do film work, but there's a constant tone of death looming over it (not full death, but effectively).

Star Wars has enough power and pockets to keep it going for while because ... Star Wars, and also...Disney.
But the smart money right now is in gearing up exclusive streaming content and routing resources to that endeavor more. Even cable companies are starting to pull the plug on non-streaming linear TV services, and even the ones keeping linear TV are encouraging streaming platform purchasing instead - and this is because the contracts involved in linear TV are insane ... cable companies make pennies on the dollar, and the production studios also don't make a lot - it's the distributors that are constantly making money by hiking the rates, and they're hiking the rates because fewer people are watching linear TV, and the contracts are "per head" based...so it's to the cable TV company's advantage to encourage a customer to move to streaming platforms and not bother with linear TV because if they can weed out the population there over a few years, then they can pull the plug on linear TV and stop hemorrhaging money on expensive legacy bandwidth solutions - it's not efficient. They get about 4 to 6 HD channels in one piece of equipment....think about how terrible that is.

For film, it's getting even more ridiculous. You either have to make a film for nothing, or have massive pockets to make a massive beast, and in either case, you have to massively saturate the marketing to get anywhere because people just aren't interested in theaters like they were before, and even if they were, the price of tickets has not gone up in scale with inflation (and if you tried, people just wouldn't show up), so it's on a steady decline inherently, and then there's the fighting over who gets how much. Distributors are pushing for more out of theaters, and theaters are buckling under the new rates, and the distributors are only really getting anything like this to work because the succeeding distributors are mostly at this point owned by parent companies that also own the studio that made the film that's being distributed. Studios that aren't owned by companies that are their own distributors are really struggling to make it right now.

Disney accounted for 35% of the top 9 leaders for 2019, and the drop off from Disney to the next runner up (Warner) was nearly 60% in reduction.
The bottom 5 studios of the top 9 leading studios combined accounted for less than Disney itself by more than 10 percentage points.

In 2014 Fox, WB, and Disney were effectively tied at around $4 billion each. In 2019, you're looking at just under $4 billion for Disney and no one coming close to that other than them.

And that's not just because Disney is a Goliath of business. It's also that the business is getting harder, and resources thinner, which usually leads to only a few leading businesses taking the cake and everyone else suffering.

In another 10 years, the landscape is going to look quite different, and I won't be shocked to see Disney continue films for a bit, but to really pick up speed on Star Wars streaming content.

...but yes...it looks like we're going backwards to the "1000 years before" era - the golden era...at least...that keeps being what they talk about beyond what's already been in the pipeline form the ST production spill-over.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Quite wise on the realistic, economic side of things. However, I still feel that theaters are good at premiers of big time movies. You would expect a large movie to be released on Disney plus in its release date. Its like a tradition. Movies premiere in theaters. But, on the main economic side of things, you make plenty of wise points.

 

Yes. That will continue for a while, but don't dismiss new approaches coming that rival that moment such as a sort of Watch Party type premieres where millions of people watch a streaming premiere live together with an option of watching each other like a live interactable reaction video. Folks may have the ability to shut that off and just focus on the show, but I won't be shocked to see this approach.
Youtube has created an excited culture around live events like this; they just haven't been show premieres...yet.

I also won't be shocked when someone realizes that the pilot episode is frequently as massive as a film (or bigger) and that you can digitally release it at a theater and then stream it very shortly after (with theater audience footage included as a bonus feature) the next month (and eventually that would come down to weeks or days), and roll it into a show for the remainder of the season - skipping the expensive film cycle (20 million vs 250+ million), and mostly empty disc cycle, while at the same time widening the cultural moment, viralness of your show's premiere, and therefore, the steady streaming subscription income.

The "eventness" of a theater hasn't been taken advantage of yet or realized for the relation it shares to livecast events going on today, nor has the premiere of a series and film been realized as at least equal in value (with a series likely coming out ahead more frequently).

Especially I see this as attractive for two reasons:
1) Theater runners are hungry for another option (they are currently bouncing events constantly to try to find another revenue than films).
2) Smaller assets that are medium to big series' would be able to expand their market at a very low cost compared to the cost of jumping into making a film (which has been historically monetarily rocky for many shows). And when access is widened to the smaller more frequent groups, historically, it takes off like wildfire.

But yeah, I don't think the pagentry of the theater is leaving as fast as the film industry ramps down. We'll still have big social events together for sure.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

it's clear that we will get more movies without the skywalker characters, but I want to see more of Rey and her friends, or more of the old characters like Yoda

 

I know this has probably been said hundreds of times, but I'd love to an Old Republic Show. I think it has the potential to be brilliant!

 

I think the cast of the sequel trilogy have had enough going by their interviews. So I don't think we will see them back any time soon, maybe in about a decade.

Whats do I want to see? I want to see a full on War between Jedi and Sith, before the rule of two, armies of both sides battling it out.

What do I not want to see, another trilogy about a padawan who takes 3 films to become a jedi(we've seen that twice). Or a film with hardly any force users in it.

 

Ah I movie about the 100 year darkness could be quite interesting

 

I’m really torn on this one. The Rise of Skywalker felt like a fitting end to everything, and as much as I’d like to see that story continue, it feels right to end it where it is and explore other stories. It’s complete, and now it’s time to move on to other Star Wars adventures. I love those characters, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be as emotionally invested in the standalone films as I was the Skywalker Saga.

That being said, The Mandalorian has proved that Star Wars is more than capable of moving beyond the core nine films and branching off into other eras and parts of the galaxy that are completely unrelated. (I sincerely hope season 2 doesn’t undo that by introducing as many characters from the animated series as there are rumored to appear.)

For as vast and expansive as the Star Wars galaxy is, Disney keeps going back to what’s familiar because it works. However, what they fail to realize is that the words “Star Wars” being attached to a project is enough to sell it, and if it’s really good, it won’t matter if it’s connected to what we already know about Star Wars or not.

 

Thats pretty smart. In my opinion, weather I like Star Wars content or not, it still all comes down to its name. Star wars is Star Wars. We all know and love it!

 

The most logical direction is forward, but taking a time leap of 30 years (just like every other trilogy of films.)
I think the only reason many are overly-critical of The Rise of Skywalker is that it replaced Return of the Jedi as the final FINAL say in the matter…. And doing so it ended the saga in an inferior manner (is Palpatine truly dead? Is the first order truly gone? What government is in place moving forwards? Are the jedi back this time? Who is running the resistance now? Etc…) however, making a new trilogy will ease it, and would make episode 9 feel like another episode instead of the “true” end. I am all for episode 10, 11, and 12. Star Wars can move forwards forever long after we’re all dead. It is generational, it should have no ending. It should evolve.