Is Disney-Lucasfilm Changing its Star Wars Film-Making Strategy?

Since Solo flopped back in 2018--indisputably and hard (even the Deadline folks expressed suspicions that the numbers they had understated the disaster)--there has been much more smoke than fire where the cinematic side of the Star Wars franchise has been concerned. The concluding film of the sequel trilogy apart, there has not been a single film in the five years since, and so far as I can tell, no informed observer seriously expecting Star Wars on the big screen this year, or maybe even the next.

Besides the studio's getting burned (and very badly burned indeed) the pandemic confused things--depressing revenue, and inflaming the already exuberant expectations about the money to be made for streaming, raised expectations that this, not theatrical release, was the logical focus for producers, all across Hollywood, with this reflected in Disney's case, and Star Wars' case, in the studio's launching a succession of Star Wars-themed streaming series. (There was no Boba Fett movie of the kind once planned--but there has been a "Book of Boba Fett.")

Of course, with the box office recovering, and expectations surrounding streaming "less exuberant" than before, studio chiefs have their eyes fixed on selling $20 tickets once more. Still, the financial damage of the pandemic remains, compounded by what, compared with the post-Great Recession norm expectation of "free money for investors," have been high interest rates.

Alas, Disney-Lucasfilm has been stumbling here, moving from one effort that produces a lot of publicity but no movie to another --significant in which is its, like the runners of a certain other aging franchise (the post-reboot James Bond series), relying not on a "creative producer's" vision working with directors who may not have been household names but could be counted on to deliver "the goods" as that producer desired, to hiring some Big Name, and preferably a Hot New Name, to "Make it New."* The already long-prominent J.J. Abrams was enlisted to helm Episode VII, while they had Rian Johnson slated to direct not just The Last Jedi but a whole lot of other Star Wars, while Josh Trank (after Chronicle), and Patty Jenkins (in the wake of her success with Wonder Woman), came and went without much resulting, especially as each lost their luster (Johnson after the ill reception to The Last Jedi, Trank after Fantastic Four, Jenkins after Wonder Woman 1984).

I get from this a sense of fickleness and irrationality. Big productions do not lend themselves well to auteurial-type filmmaking (as George Lucas learned the hard way making the original Star Wars, which is why others did the actual directing on The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi), with this all the more the case given the hard realities of studio control in this day and age, and where Star Wars is concerned, an established universe and a fandom very attentive to the details with all the associated additional constraints. The result is that either the Hot New Name cannot bring very much to the film--or you get something that will displease the fan base, which will be very vocal about the fact, with the reactions to Episodes VII and VIII, exemplary. J.J. Abrams played it ultra-safe with Episode VII (such that a little way into the movie the more alert members of the audience think to themselves, "Wait, I've seen this before . . ."), while Rian Johnson did the opposite with Episode VIII, being thoroughly flippant toward the material (a major reason for the backlash).

Still, Disney may be starting to move away from this irrational approach, if their choice of Dave Filoni is anything to go by. Filoni's film experience is limited, but his television experience on Star Wars' new series is vast--a fact that may be relevant to the film he has been tasked with making, a tie-in to multiple Disney TV series'. That does not by any means guarantee a more successful film. Indeed, I am not sure that the promised Heir to the Empire (is it me or has the commentariat little-noticed that this was the same title Timothy Zahn used for the first in his big trilogy?) is a really well-conceived project, given that a TV tie-in may be quite awkward in bringing in the wider audience expected for a Star Wars movie. (Certainly it was no asset to Dr. Strange 2.) All the same, it may mean that the management is no longer pursuing fantasies of "An auteur will figure things out for us," which, at least, suggests some self-criticism, and maybe a little more insight into what the studio has and how, if this is at all possible, it might be got to work.

* In his very useful book on the saga, Licence to Thrill, James Chapman wrote of the Bond series' directors as "proficient journeymen . . . whose greatest asset was their ability to translate the script to the screen in a straightforward way without any self-conscious tricks."