Prince-1
Well-Known Member
Real Housewives as a smaller audience but also a WAAAAYYYY smaller budget than any Star Wars show. Acolyte is done and thankfully so.
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SPOILER: The Acolyte -- Disney+ Star Wars -- begins June 5, 2024
- Thread starter MisterPenguin
- Start date
Real Housewives as a smaller audience but also a WAAAAYYYY smaller budget than any Star Wars show. Acolyte is done and thankfully so.
flynnibus
Premium Member
simple.. ad sales potential
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Yeah but with a way less audience share it can't make much money in ad sales. Which on the flip side means that Acolyte or any SW shows in D+ should get way more ad sales.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
And housewives is cheap and does a demo that networks want. Don’t ask me why?
Guess we need to start doing Real Housewives of Olega on a shoestring budget with 50 ad breaks and then it would get an audience and 30 seasons.
flynnibus
Premium Member
Except... Disney+ and ads is not really a big deal yet. Where as most of your comparison was against decisions in an ad mature market.
erasure fan1
Well-Known Member
The problem with the Acolyte is, sure maybe it has more viewership than real housewives. But Disney isn't going to sell anything because of it. And that's the bread and butter of a star wars anything. Can you sell toys, collectables, Halloween costumes, lunch boxes, clothes, toothbrushes... I didn't see general mills making a power of many marshmallow crunch. That's the power of really good star wars, you can go crazy with licensing.
The Acolyte wasn't good. And it did next to nothing for merch. Now granted neither did Andor. But that was considered great by most so they are willing to give it a final season. The Acolyte wasn't really even considered ok by most peoples standards.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
And Real Housewives has no merch sales either. This is my whole point, a TV show even SW, shouldn't be expected to have merch sales or anything similar that we associate with a SW movie. We have billions upon billions of hours of TV shows, none of which generated anything but ad sales.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Yet being the operative word. Those ad sales will gain over time, and hopefully that'll lead to giving shows some time to work things out and gain an audience like linear had previously.
I have my issues with linear prematurely cancelling shows too, but at least when they get an audience like Acolyte they get a 2nd season in most cases.
flynnibus
Premium Member
I think it's a tradeoff from the 'upsizing' of TV shows to basically film quality productions.
TV used to be significantly cheaper to produce... so they could afford to commit to longer seasons up front... and less drama to pick up a new season. Now you have shows with 100million dollar budgets for 6-8 episodes. No one wants to commit 300million to make those 20+ episodes up front... and season pickups are bigger commits even at just modest increases.
Star Wars shows are also basically Sci-Fi... which have always cost more than sitcoms. It all leads to 'bigger risks - less product'
And Disney is not going to spend $100 million on a promise of future ad sales vs something they think will drive action now. They can always go back to a show and add later when it makes sense to do so. No one will get rewarded for 'banking for the future...'
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Its why budgets need to be brought back down from the heavens not only for the TV side of things, but D+ content in general (which hopefully they're doing). Its why (to use an example), even though Feige hated it, Marvel TV was run better at the time when the shows were on linear because they kept budgets in check.
erasure fan1
Well-Known Member
Star wars is all about the merch, it has been from day one. For better or for worse star wars and merchandise go hand in hand. If the show was good, it continues. It wasn't. So it didn't hit either of the important metrics. As was mentioned, The Acolyte cost near 200mil. Real housewives? Not so much. No one signed up for D+ to watch it. D+ members didn't really watch it. And they made nothing from licensing with it. Disney didn't spend 4bil on star wars thinking merchandise doesn't matter.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
I didn't say it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but I think it should be secondary when it comes to a TV show rather than a movie.
I've seen so many complaint on here, including from you I believe, on how D+ shows are so short, they aren't allowed to breathe, find their footing, etc. I'm just saying maybe instead of spending 200M on 6 episode, you go back to traditional TV spending and get 18-24 episodes, give it time to breathe, and generate ad sales. And maybe just maybe it could find that audience that would be willing to buy the merch and other stuff that you traditionally associate with SW content. That if anything is what I think Disney has failed on here, and D+ in general.
erasure fan1
Well-Known Member
I have said that for sure. The problem with most D+ shows are that they don't give enough time for the story they're telling and have to rush the ending. I do think Acolyte suffered from that as well in a way. But longer episodes wouldn't have helped. They need a better written and formatted show.
I agree don't spend 200mil, I've been critical of Disney budgets for a while now as you know. I don't think the traditional format is the answer though. A 10 to 12 episode season averaging 45min an episode would be good. The advantage of streaming is you don't have to stick to traditional ways. If you need an hour for an episode, use it. If 30min is enough, great. If it works out to 11 episodes, that's fine too. But it all starts with a compelling story and show. And the acolyte wasn't.
I think it is secondary, that was my point. If the show was really good, like my Andor example, it will most likely get another season at least. Mando went bonkers, baby yoda became a phenomenon. It was getting multiple seasons and now was rewarded with a film. It had good ratings, but the merch took it to a whole different level. The Acolyte fell so short of that, it just couldn't be justified. If by some chance it managed to do well with t-shirts, action figures, collectables... It might have justified a second season. But there was zero engagement with the show.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
I think we're basically both on the same side here. Would it have made a difference having a longer season rather than 6 episodes for Acolyte, maybe maybe not. I do think it would have allowed them to think better on how to accomplish what they were trying to do, and maybe that would have allowed for better writing.
Anyways, overall I think they (meaning Disney overall) needs to just go back to longer seasons and stick to lower per episode budgets, something we seem to both agree on.
Wendy Pleakley
Well-Known Member
Personally, I don't have an issue with cancelling shows that are expensive and not enough of a draw.
I just wish they'd commit to wrapping up shows or creating seasons that are more standalone.
The Acolyte is an incomplete Star Wars story and that will diminish its' value to the service long term.
It can also lead to the catch 22 situation where people don't watch a show until they know it has been renewed, lest they waste their time, which results in viewer hesitancy to begin with.
erasure fan1
Well-Known Member
It's an industry issue for sure. A first season should never be a cliffhanger unless the second season is already signed for and a for sure go ahead.
Agreed, but it has to be for a purpose. I don't really need to have longer seasons. I just don't want them to hog tie themselves into, "we need X-amount of episodes". If the show runner says I can't do this in 8 episodes. They have to be willing to give them the time they need. If they only need 6, I really don't want a bunch of filler that doesn't add anything. I guess the long and short of it is, learn to make a better show. Lol
Disney Irish
Premium Member
I think we all can agree they need to make better shows overall. And yes it is an industry wide issue to be sure, even Netflix has this same issue. Its like Hollywood forgot how to handle episodic TV when they started making episodic shows for streaming. They got into this idea it had to be a movie but cut up into episodes.
Anyways hopefully one day we'll get something better.
Tha Realest
Well-Known Member
Agents of SHIELD was probably the only really successful Marvel linear TV series - and even that steadily dropped over time. The linear series had no where near the viewership or cultural impact of the Marvel Netflix series.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
The Marvel Netflix series were still all done under Marvel Television, same as Agents of Shield, run by Jeph Loeb, even if they were put on Netflix. So they were still basically a linear show, just darker and grittier. It was all still run the same way as the ABC shows, and budgets were moderate, I think Daredevil came in around $3.3M per episode which was comparable to AoS.
So you basically just proved my point. Thanks
Hawkeye_2018
Well-Known Member
I'm surprised Ashoka is still getting a season 2. Feels like they are throwing away a ton of money on this just to make Filoni happy. And lets face it, Filoni needs to stick with animation .