We had mixed feelings about the news in August that Disney+ had cancelled its Star Wars spinoff series The Acolyte after just one season. At the time, it seemed steadily declining ratings were to blame, particularly given the high production costs. More budgetary details have trickled out since then, indicating that the streaming series spent far more than previously reported, topping $230.1 million—roughly $28.7 million per episode—before post-production had even been completed. That’s significantly more than the original $180 million reported budget, or about $22.5 million per episode.
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Writing at Forbes, Caroline Reid noted that The Acolyte was hampered from the start by a challenging post-pandemic financial environment at Disney. It was greenlit in 2021 along with many other quite costly series to boost subscriber numbers for Disney+, contributing to $11.4 billion losses in that division. Then Bob Iger returned as CEO and prioritized cutting costs. The Acolyte’s heavy VFX needs and star casting (most notably Carrie Ann Moss and Squid Game’s Lee Jung-jae) made it a pricey proposition, with ratings expectations to match. And apparently the show didn’t generate as much merchandising revenue as expected.
As the folks at Slash Film pointed out, The Acolyte’s bloated production costs aren’t particularly eye-popping compared to, say, Prime Video’s The Rings of Power, which costs a whopping $58 million per episode, or Marvel’s Secret Invasion (about $35 million per episode). But it’s pricey for a Star Wars series; The Mandalorian racked up around $15 million per episode, on par with Game of Thrones. So given the flagging ratings and lukewarm reviews, the higher costs proved to be “the final nail in the coffin” for the series in the eyes of Disney
More than that, they were doing audience surveys and, my guess is, a lot of their audience told them they didn’t even finish season 1 and had no interest in a season 2.
I liked the first 2 episodes, I thought it had promise, then the 3rd episode absolutely shit the bed.
I hear Ep. 5 was better, I’ll never know because I checked out.
It did pick up at the end but it was too late, there was just too much shit.
Agree, I forced myself to the end & semi enjoyed them, but it all still left a bad taste in my mouth from the bad start. I found myself hating most of the characters!
At the total opposite end of the spectrum I’ve recently finished watching all the Clone Wars & then Bad Batch series, & thoroughly enjoyed them both. Possibly some of the best SW content, even over a lot of the films.
Acolyte was cancelled by poor viewership. The premier did ok, but the finale was terrible for views. The cost was ok if this was topping viewership charts, but that didn’t happen.
Attacking fans and bad writing didn’t help either, but both have been common for Disney Star wars.
