The Acolyte was not a hit for Disney+ but that alone doesn’t speak to its quality or lack thereof. After all, Andor didn’t have huge ratings, either. The difference between the two? The Acolyte was riddled with bad writing, amateurish filmmaking and didn’t have a discernible audience in mind—at least not one that actually watches Star Wars. Andor, on the other hand, has the best writing in any Star Wars project and dealt with serious themes in a serious way. While it wasn’t geared toward fans who only watch Star Wars for lightsaber duels—something The Acolyte had in abundance—it was targeting an older, more mature fanbase that has always longed for Star Wars to grow into something more.
When The Acolyte was canceled, it almost felt like an admission from Disney and Lucasfilm, that perhaps the franchise was being taken in altogether the wrong direction. Of course, to its many defenders in the press and on social media, there was only one acceptable answer: The Acolyte was canceled because of “toxic fans” on forums and social media and review-bombers on Rotten Tomatoes.
I noted how preposterous this line of reasoning—if you can call it that—was at the time. “The Acolyte simply cost far, far too much and that investment wasn’t met with huge viewership numbers like The Mandalorian or critical acclaim like Andor” I wrote at the time, making what I believe is a pretty simple economic observation, though it’s certainly less colorful and outrageous than blaming “dudebros.”
Now, Alan Bergman, the Co-Chairmen of Disney Entertainment, has echoed this in a recent interview with Vulture, saying:
So as it relates to Acolyte , we were happy with our performance, but it wasn’t where we needed it to be given the cost structure of that title, quite frankly to go and make a season two. So that’s the reason why we didn’t do that. Skeleton Crew is in process now, so we’ll see. We’ve seen some growth on that. We’ll see how that goes. As you said, the reviews have been excellent on Skeleton Crew , so we’ll have to see how that all plays out as it moves forward.
The performance—aka the ratings, aka how many people actually watched the show—wasn’t where it needed to be to spend another $200+ million on a second season. Plain and simple. Notably, Bergman did not say “toxic fans yelled at us on Twitter so we decided not to make another season.” That’s because no amount of toxicity online actually determines whether a show is renewed or not. Likewise, a show that has a passionate fanbase might be canceled for the exact same reasons. Look no further than My Lady Jane on Prime Video. That was a fun show and its fans really loved it, but the numbers weren’t there to justify the cost of a second season. That’s a shame, but it does nobody any good to pretend like it’s the fans’ fault, whether they were toxic or just not enthusiastic enough. Entertainment is a business and the numbers have to add up. In Andor’s case, Disney made a two-season commitment and enjoyed all the critical acclaim that series garnered. The Acolyte certainly received more critical applause than it deserved, but even its defenders in the press weren’t clamoring for it to win awards.
If toxic fans could kill a series, True Detective: Night Country would not have led to its creator taking over the reigns of that franchise and bagging a multi-year deal in the process. I don’t mean to suggest that True Detective fans who hated Night Country were toxic, either. I hated that show with a burning passion that continues to burn quite a lot hotter than my dislike of The Acolyte. My point is merely that people online being angry about something doesn’t tip the scales much. We’re still almost certainly getting three more seasons of Amazon’s The Rings Of Power, and that’s a terrible show that has left the Lord Of The Rings fan-base in uproar and disarray. But Amazon appears to have dug in on that one, while Disney has apparently started to wake up to the fact that its current approach to Star Wars is failing miserably.
So what next? I’d like to see more fun shows like Skeleton Crew. More to the point, I’d like the powers-that-be at Disney and Lucasfilm to realize that Star Wars has a built-in audience and that gearing upcoming shows and movies toward that audience—which is mostly boys and men—makes good financial sense. That doesn’t mean we can’t have diversity or great female characters—Princess Leia is one of the most adored characters in media—but it does mean we need to return to some semblance of sanity and business sense when it comes to understanding audiences and who actually watches these franchises and buys the merchandise and so forth. I actually discussed this in another post about The Acolyte’s cancelation earlier this year as well:
This is something I’ve discussed in my “theory of the half-interested girlfriend” which posits that if you appeal to your core demographic, the enthusiastic core fanbase will bring more casual audiences into the fold. But, if you don’t appeal to the core demographic, you’ll not only lose your most passionate fans, but all the casual fans they would have brought with them. The same would apply if the romance industry began targeting men instead of their core demographic—women! If women stopped going to chick-flicks, they wouldn’t bring their “half-interested boyfriends” along with them either.
Let’s hope Disney and Lucasfilm—and the rest of Hollywood—can self-correct after these past few years of misguided, arrogant and short-sighted efforts designed to seemingly create a new “modern audience” out of thin air—in place of established fans who made these franchises successful to begin with. Burning money isn’t great for the balance sheets, especially when said audience has yet to materialize. You can do that and continue to create more diverse stories along the way all at the same time.
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