Has Lucasfilm Figured Out How To Deal With Negative Press?

We are in the middle of probably the longest period of radio silence from Lucasfilm directly since they were acquired by Disney. People who follow Thirty Minute Reviews will likely remember the period immediately after the acquisition through, let's be real about six months ago, when no one who worked at Lucasfilm could sneeze without it making a headline. Movies were in development, movies were out of development, shows were happening, shows were not happening, it created a chaos of apparent dysfunction that was easy for detractors to jump on and manufacture controversy where it may or may not have been. After what happened with The Acolyte, could Lucasfilm have learned their lesson and moved to a new system of keeping information away from the public until it's time for them to know?

So to recap, earlier this year Lucasfilm released the first of two live-action series (The Acolyte) which was, at worst, serviceable. Since it was announced almost four years ago, this show has been subjected to a coordinated campaign designed to bring the show down and, unfortunately, this campaign was largely successful which caused a general malaise towards the show going into it when it was already dealing with the uphill battle of trying to sell people on new characters in a new era of the galaxy. This is not the first time Disney has fallen victim to this scheme since about a year ago The Marvels bombed following a similar campaign despite being one of Marvel's better movies in the post-Endgame era.

This paradigm shift, a lucrative information economy built on tearing down things perceived to be political based on the gender or ethnicity of those creating the show or movie, is one that studios have been grappling with over the last few years. How are they expected to compete with people on the internet masquerading as insiders who claim to have insider information about major upcoming releases with the desire to bring them down? The answer appears, at least for Lucasfilm, to be to keep everything under wraps entirely. There is nothing to speculate about or make things up about if the status of various projects are kept completely under wraps.

Looking at the projects Lucasfilm has in development (only live-action streaming or movies) they have four (possibly five) films and four (possibly five) shows in development. On the theatrical side, there is The Mandalorian and Grogu slated for release in May 2026, a New Jedi Order movie set after The Rise of Skywalker, a Dawn of the Jedi movie directed by James Mangold, and a movie set to wrap up all the post-Return of the Jedi Disney+ shows that we just refer to as Heir to the Empire. On the streaming side, we know that Skeleton Crew is coming out this December, a second season of Andor is on the horizon for early 2025, and a second season of Ahsoka is in development, however, no further information is available as to when it's shooting or when it's releasing. It appears that there will not be a fourth season of The Mandalorian since The Mandalorian and Grogu seems to be filling that role and the flexible show/movie is Lando which has been reported to go either way.

The stark difference here is that we know very little about the majority of these projects. We know The Mandalorian and Grogu is currently in production because there was a video from set at D23 to showcase that the movie was in fact being made. We also know that the show Skeleton Crew is happening because we have a trailer and a release date. Andor has been shot and has a loose window but beyond that, they're in a very Sony-style space. We don't know what's coming, and arguably that's for the best. We don't need to know every project currently in the "blue sky stage" of development, we don't need to hear every idea an exec pitches to try and find someone to come up with a show around it, we just need to see trailers and the final product. Maybe a project when it's starting production but we don't need to know if a show or movie is not coming out for years.

The length of time we now know about projects is what creates the illusion of dysfunction, even where there may not be any. Look at Universal for example: in January of this year they announced that Jurassic World 4 was in development and I have confidence that in July of next year, I will be sitting in a theater to watch Jurassic World: Rebirth. I'm similarly confident that The Mandalorian and Grogu will come out on the prescribed date at the end of May 2026, but the other movies are so abstract that it's hard to build hype. The other problem is the longer the general public knows about a project, the harder it is to build and sustain interest. We know New Jedi Order is coming because it was formally announced at Star Wars Celebration in 2023, but the earliest that movie could come out based on existing release dates in December of 2026, three and a half years after it was announced. By that point, audiences will question why it took so long.

I don't want to hear about anything Lucasfilm is doing until the show or movie is in production and they have something concrete to show. Here is the director, here is the writer, here are the actors, here's what the movie is about. By holding off until that moment and being rigorous in what shows or movies are developed, they can allow new and diverse voices to explore new places in the continuity without fear of retribution from opportunists pretending to be fans. The problem with what was posited by the Variety piece a few weeks ago (bringing in teams of super fans as a focus group to help develop projects) is that it is not super fans that are the problem, it's people with politically based agendas.