Star Wars: Go home (M)Ando(r), the Zillo Beast Is Back (Again!)

[The Bard of Banefort]

Is there a master list of all the announced Star Wars projects that have been cancelled? I genuinely can’t remember all of them.

Lucasfilm should have learned by now that they shouldn’t announce a project until they have a script and cast, and are ready to start filming. It’s hard to get excited about “Untitled [insert popular director] Movie” when we don’t even have a working title. I have a very hard time believing that Taika’s movie will be made, especially since he’s no longer as popular as he was after Thor: Ragnarok. It’s not nearly as bad as D&D’s fall from grace, but it shows just how precarious popularity is when dealing with a major franchise. (Ditto for Patty Jenkins).

I don’t want to jump on the Kathleen Kennedy hate train, since I’ve always found a lot of that discourse unfair, but at this point I’m surprised she hasn’t “retired.” In some respects, I’d say she’s actually very responsible, since she’d clearly rather stop a movie mid-production (Rogue One, Solo) than release something she considers subpar. And I think starving the audience of movie content will be beneficial in the long run and build more hype around future movies. But nevertheless, this is a bit of an ongoing PR disaster, so unless it’s all actually Bob Iger’s fault, it’s surprising that she’s still in charge.

Lastly, I could easily see Lucasfilm throwing a boatload of money at Lawrence Kasdan for one last Star Wars movie. He clearly has the talent that they’re finding so hard to replicate.

[Heartofice]

3 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Is there a master list of all the announced Star Wars projects that have been cancelled? I genuinely can’t remember all of them.

Lucasfilm should have learned by now that they shouldn’t announce a project until they have a script and cast, and are ready to start filming. It’s hard to get excited about “Untitled [insert popular director] Movie” when we don’t even have a working title. I have a very hard time believing that Taika’s movie will be made, especially since he’s no longer as popular as he was after Thor: Ragnarok. It’s not nearly as bad as D&D’s fall from grace, but it shows just how precarious popularity is when dealing with a major franchise. (Ditto for Patty Jenkins).

I don’t want to jump on the Kathleen Kennedy hate train, since I’ve always found a lot of that discourse unfair, but at this point I’m surprised she hasn’t “retired.” In some respects, I’d say she’s actually very responsible, since she’d clearly rather stop a movie mid-production (Rogue One, Solo) than release something she considers subpar. And I think starving the audience of movie content will be beneficial in the long run and build more hype around future movies. But nevertheless, this is a bit of an ongoing PR disaster, so unless it’s all actually Bob Iger’s fault, it’s surprising that she’s still in charge.

Lastly, I could easily see Lucasfilm throwing a boatload of money at Lawrence Kasdan for one last Star Wars movie. He clearly has the talent that they’re finding so hard to replicate.

I’m sure when they started to announce many of these properties they assumed the money train would not end and everything would get made and everyone would watch and love it all. 
 

Times change.

[The Bard of Banefort]

5 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I’m sure when they started to announce many of these properties they assumed the money train would not end and everything would get made and everyone would watch and love it all. 
 

Times change.

At some point, you have to learn from your mistakes. We’ve had a canceled Josh Trank movie, a canceled Patty Jenkins movie, a canceled Kevin Feige movie, a canceled D&D trilogy, a canceled Rian Johnson trilogy, a canceled Damon Lindelof movie, and probably a bunch of others that I’m forgetting.  The PR mess could have been avoided if they just kept the lid on their projects until they were ready to go into production. Cancelling all these previously-announced projects just makes Lucasfilm look incompetent.

[sifth]

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

At some point, you have to learn from your mistakes. We’ve had a canceled Josh Trank movie, a canceled Patty Jenkins movie, a canceled Kevin Feige movie, a canceled D&D trilogy, a canceled Rian Johnson trilogy, a canceled Damon Lindelof movie, and probably a bunch of others that I’m forgetting.  The PR mess could have been avoided if they just kept the lid on their projects until they were ready to go into production. Cancelling all these previously-announced projects just makes Lucasfilm look incompetent.

What exactly is the issue, Star Wars has run into when it comes to making films? Didn't the sequel films each make over a billion dollars?

[The Bard of Banefort]

12 minutes ago, sifth said:

What exactly is the issue, Star Wars has run into when it comes to making films? Didn't the sequel films each make over a billion dollars?

I’m not really sure what you mean. Why they haven’t gone through with any of these films? I’m not sure, but it probably has something to do with creative control. When you’re a part of these massive IPs, you can’t stray too far from the template, which a lot of writers/directors resent.

With something like Marvel, they apparently start working on the VFX work before they even film the movie, so you have to structure the movie around the action scenes and can’t really make any changes on the fly. It’s probably why they’ve been hiring a lot of relatively inexperienced directors lately, since they’re just hoping to get their foot in the door.

[sifth]

2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I’m not really sure what you mean. Why they haven’t gone through with any of these films? I’m not sure, but it probably has something to do with creative control. When you’re a part of these massive IPs, you can’t stray too far from the template, which a lot of writers/directors resent.

With something like Marvel, they apparently start working on the VFX work before they even film the movie, so you have to structure the movie around the action scenes and can’t really make any changes on the fly. It’s probably why they’ve been hiring a lot of relatively inexperienced directors lately, since they’re just hoping to get their foot in the door.

It just seems rather crazy is all. All of these scripts being rejected.

[Rhom]

The sequel trilogy made money… but it was less and less each time.  Throw in Solo and they got a bad case of cold feet.

All of which could have been avoided with the simplest of writing techniques… an outline.

[sifth]

2 minutes ago, Rhom said:

The sequel trilogy made money… but it was less and less each time.  Throw in Solo and they got a bad case of cold feet.

All of which could have been avoided with the simplest of writing techniques… an outline.

True they made less and less each time, but each of those sequels still made a billion dollars. That's still a lot of money. Are they worried that Rise of Skywalker has angered the fandom or something?

[Rhom]

12 minutes ago, sifth said:

True they made less and less each time, but each of those sequels still made a billion dollars. That's still a lot of money. Are they worried that Rise of Skywalker has angered the fandom or something?

Well… ummm… it did.

And yeah, they did make money.  So did Amazing Spider-Man 2, but Sony saw the writing on the wall.  The trends were there for SW and they had no plan how to move forward with the narrative beyond the retro named “Skywalker Saga.”

[Kalbear]

With Star Wars its more than one movie making a profit- they are managing the brand. TRoS sucking jeopardizes the Mandalorian, disney+, the rides at Disneyland, the tie-in video games, the toy launches, the cartoons...and that makes them real risk-averse. 

They want to turn it into another shared universe like the MCU. They haven't figured out the right way to do it, and the only consistently mediocre thing they've found is expanding the Filoni Clone Wars world and methodology.

[DaveSumm]

@sifth

Rise of Skywalker didn’t make anything close to what it could’ve done. It had half the box office of Force Awakens, when it should’ve been Endgame money. I mean it’s the finale of what was once the entirety of Star Wars, the Skywalker Saga. 

[Veltigar]

On 3/23/2023 at 10:15 PM, Kalnestk Oblast said:

That's just how Filoni rolls. Tons of Clone Wars episodes or ATLA eps be like that. It's not that different from the stupid Jawa egg quest. 

If this is the sort of thing that's gonna bother you you might as well not watch anything Star Wars related on Disney+ save Andor. It's incredibly stupid and small and weird and why the fuck are they on a planet where they have had MULTIPLE PEOPLE GET EATEN BY BIRDS and have done nothing about it until now and why are they just out training on the beach without any kind of advance party or scouts or warning or...HOLY CRAP IT IS SOOOO DUMB

But the payoff will be Grogu riding those stupid birds Avatar style to save the day in a few eps and y'all will be so pumped to buy the action figure

It's been awhile since I last saw ATLA, but apart from some exceptions in the first book, I do think the average level of world building and plotting was much higher than what we see in The Mandalorian.

The frustrating thing about The Mandalorian is that I see glimmers of something better in there on occasion. I have said it before and will say it again, but The Mandalorian has  pretty cool character design and his relationship with Grogu works exceedingly well as the emotional centre of the show.

But the writers insist on breaking their own windows by not thinking this shit through.

[Raja]

Wait wait wait

Vel from Andor is the waif from GOT?

I knew she looked familiar

[RumHam]

7 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

At some point, you have to learn from your mistakes. We’ve had a canceled Josh Trank movie, a canceled Patty Jenkins movie, a canceled Kevin Feige movie, a canceled D&D trilogy, a canceled Rian Johnson trilogy, a canceled Damon Lindelof movie, and probably a bunch of others that I’m forgetting.  The PR mess could have been avoided if they just kept the lid on their projects until they were ready to go into production. Cancelling all these previously-announced projects just makes Lucasfilm look incompetent.

For the record I don't think they've cancelled Johnson's movies. No one is actively working on it, but Johnson still claims he intends to do them at some point. My understand is the Lindelof movie isn't canceled either, they just switched writers. 

[sifth]

5 minutes ago, RumHam said:

For the record I don't think they've cancelled Johnson's movies. No one is actively working on it, but Johnson still claims he intends to do them at some point. My understand is the Lindelof movie isn't canceled either, they just switched writers. 

They confirmed the Lindelof film isn’t happening, last week.

[RumHam]

9 minutes ago, sifth said:

They confirmed the Lindelof film isn’t happening, last week.

Did they? The article posted here from 3/22 says:

Quote

“Peaky Blinders” creator Steven Knight is set to write the screenplay for the untitled “Star Wars” movie that Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (“Ms. Marvel”) is attached to direct, as original screenwriters Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson have departed the project, Variety has confirmed.

But I guess they could have cancelled it after that. That'd be kinda funny though to hire a new writer and give him less than four days before firing him. 

[sifth]

13 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Did they? The article posted here from 3/22 says:

But I guess they could have cancelled it after that. That'd be kinda funny though to hire a new writer and give him less than four days before firing him. 

https://deadline.com/2023/03/damon-lindelof-justin-britt-gibson-exit-secret-star-wars-movie-1235306120/amp/
 

Here’s the article I read. Take it for what you will.

[The Bard of Banefort]

Like I said earlier, I think taking years-long breaks between movies is actually a good way to build hype, but all the canned projects are just a publicity disaster (and a disappointment for people who are fans of those directors). Overall, I’d say TV has been a success though. The only show that hasn’t brought in a big audience is Andor, which has already blossomed into this cult classic/critical darling. 

Solo looks like it’s heading towards cult classic territory. I’ve seen so many people say they’ve been shocked by how much they liked it. And a lot of that comes down to the writing: Lawrence Kasdan can still write, and he wrote an entertaining movie. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Lando show is basically Solo 2.  

That said, it looks like they took the wrong lesson from Solo flopping. They seem to think the problem was that someone other than Harrison Ford was playing Han, when in truth it had more to do with timing/poor marketing/backlash to TLJ. The actor gave a really good performance, in my opinion.

[RumHam]

29 minutes ago, sifth said:

https://deadline.com/2023/03/damon-lindelof-justin-britt-gibson-exit-secret-star-wars-movie-1235306120/amp/
 

Here’s the article I read. Take it for what you will.

Quote

Details as to the film’s plot are still under wraps, though we understand that Obaid-Chinoy remains at the helm, with further details on the project to be unveiled at next month’s Star Wars Celebration in London. Sources suggest that the film is still in a solid position to be one of the first out of the gate for the franchise — if not the first — on the heels of 2019’s Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.

So it's still coming out, for now. 

[sifth]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

So it's still coming out, for now. 

Yea, but not using Lindelof's script.