American actors Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford on the set of “Star Wars: A Recent Hope,” written, directed and produced by Georges Lucas.
Sunset Boulevard | Corbis Historical | Getty Images
The Force stays strong with the Star Wars franchise.
Despite not releasing a theatrical film since 2019, Star Wars has been named the highest film franchise of 2023 by Fandom, the world’s largest platform for entertainment fans.
The highest title for Star Wars comes as Disney has been strategically rebuilding the franchise, stalling its cinema presence in favor of long-form television content on its streaming platform Disney+ in addition to alternative storytelling through video games, comic books, novels, virtual reality and even a short-lived hotel experience in Florida.
“The Star Wars brand has no peer on the subject of the unprecedented goodwill, cultural ubiquity, character mythology and sheer revenue-generating power achieved across most every vertical within the entertainment ecosystem,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.
Fandom’s top 10 film franchises of 2023
- Star Wars
- Disney
- Harry Potter
- The Marvel Cinematic Universe
- The DC Prolonged Universe
- The Hunger Games
- Jurassic Park
- Dune
- James Bond
- Avatar
Source: Fandom
Fandom’s scoring relies on five metrics: what number of content pages the franchise has on Fandom’s site; rankings from critics and fans; how often the franchise is represented in the actual world through conventions and fan events; cultural relevance to those that usually are not core to the fan base; and the quantity of latest content from the franchise to sustain interest.
Star Wars’ No.1 rating suggests that Disney’s revitalization of the brand, which took successful within the wake of a sequel trilogy for the movies, is working. Disney appears at No. 2 on the list, representing its animated movies, and its Marvel and Avatar franchises also make the cut.
Disney’s success with Star Wars also can offer a blueprint to other film franchises which might be in the method or restarting or evolving — namely Marvel and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Harry Potter and DC Studios.
A short while ago, in your local movie show
Nevertheless, it quickly became clear that Disney did not have a singular plan when it got down to make its recent trilogy of Star Wars movies. The narrative thread that was alleged to link the trilogy together was improvised and resulted in three movies that are not cohesive and riddled with plot holes.
Rey and Kylo Ren face off in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”
Disney
Each movie appears to be a complete departure from the previous one. If 2015’s “The Force Awakens” was criticized for being an excessive amount of of a mirror of the unique trilogy, 2017’s “The Last Jedi” was criticized for doing the precise opposite. “The Rise of Skywalker” in 2019 undid major story lines from its predecessor and sidelined major characters. Emperor Palpatine, who was killed by Darth Vader in 1983’s “Return of the Jedi,” returned — by some means.
In between each film within the sequel trilogy, Disney released a movie that harkened back to a crucial plot point from past Star Wars movies. “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” which followed the rebels who stole the Death Star plans given to Princess Leia in the unique “Star Wars,” was generally well-received across the board when it hit theaters in 2018, but two years later, “Solo,” which centered on Han Solo’s origin, fell flat with critics and plenty of within the fan community.
“On the time, Disney’s strategy was to essentially release one recent Star Wars film theatrically every year,” said Peter Csathy, founder and chair of advisory firm Creative Media. “But every year brought diminishing box office returns.”
A recent generation of Star Wars movies at the worldwide box office
- “The Force Awakens” (2015) — $2.07 billion
- “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” (2016) — $1.05 billion
- “The Last Jedi” (2017) — $1.33 billion
- “Solo: A Star Wars Story” (2018) — $393.1 million
- “The Rise of Skywalker” (2019) — $1.077 billion
Source: Comscore
While “Solo” was the one true box office flop, Disney decided to suspend its theatrical Star Wars releases and regroup. It was already seeing success from the primary season of TV spinoff “The Mandalorian,” which launched in late 2019. The series was proof that Star Wars can strike a balance between nostalgia and innovation — and that the franchise didn’t have to be in theaters to thrive.
“The Mouse House pivoted to a technique of scarcity for the large screen, while fleshing out the characters and storylines on TV and introducing them — and your complete Star Wars universe — to recent generations with recent viewing habits, essentially going where the audience was going,” Csathy said. “This, in turn, builds anticipation and buzz for future foremost marquee events at a theater near you.”
Rebuilding an empire
Disney is not set to release one other Star Wars film in cinemas until 2026. But, in crafting its televised Star Wars content, it’s rebuilding goodwill inside its established community and drawing in recent fans.
Overall, the live-action Star Wars series — “The Mandalorian,” “The Book of Boba Fett,” “Andor,” “Kenobi” and “Ahsoka” — have been well-received by critics and fans alike.
While these stories explore past Star Wars tales, either harkening back to characters seen in past installments or exploring a bit of the Star Wars timeline, and are unlikely to connect with future theatrical entrants, they supply moviegoers with a way of cohesion and quality.
Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano in “The Mandalorian” on Disney+.
Disney
In animation, Disney released a final season within the “Clone Wars” saga, where fan-favorite Ahsoka Tano debuted, and continued following a lot of clone troopers from this era in “The Bad Batch.” Moreover, through streaming, Disney has given audiences several other ways to look at Star Wars stories.
There’s “Tales of the Jedi,” which explored the backstories of Ahsoka and Count Dooku; “Young Jedi Adventures,” which caters to a preschool demographic; and “Visions,” a set of animated shorts from different genres and featuring different levels of maturity.
In establishing such variety, Disney is entertaining its existing fanbase and offering olive branches to newcomers of all ages.
“I feel that creators in these worlds have to seek out ways to construct them and expand the audiences while ensuring that it doesn’t skew an excessive amount of from what the core fans love about it,” said Stephanie Fried, chief marketing officer at Fandom.
One other key for Disney has been parsing these series out slowly over the course of several years.
“A critical takeaway is that franchise theatrical releases need room to breathe,” said Csathy. “We’re seeing diminishing returns by the rapid release schedule of the past several years, and now there may be a broad realization that anticipation needs to construct for box office dynamite to ignite.” That, and the proven fact that none of those shows are required viewing for future Star Wars projects.
Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and Alan Tudyk as K-2SO in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.”
Disney | Lucasfilm
Disney found itself in a troublesome spot with its Marvel Cinematic Universe since it began introducing key characters in its Marvel streaming shows before they appeared in theatrical projects. This required fans to compensate for hours of television content to know what was happening on the large screen.
While some viewers might need to compensate for episodes of “Clone Wars” before diving into “Ahsoka,” for instance, audiences could in lots of cases tune into these shows without having to do any homework.
The educational curve
The teachings Disney has learned in revitalizing Star Wars are some that it could apply to a different struggling franchise, Marvel, and that Warner Bros. Discovery’s DC and Harry Potter universes may take to heart as they embark on their very own refreshes.
At Marvel, life after “Avengers: Endgame” has been riddled with inconsistency and uncertainty. That has taken a toll on box office returns. “The Marvels” posted the worst opening of a MCU film ever in November, leaving the industry and audiences questioning how Disney can save its own superheroes.
Even Disney CEO Bob Iger has been publicly critical of the studio, saying on several occasions that Disney must be more selective about which Marvel superheroes get sequel movies and when to herald fresh stories, especially after Disney packed its streaming service with nearly a dozen recent shows in only three years.
Add to that the recent firing of Jonathan Majors, who was alleged to be the franchise’s next big villain Kang, after he was convicted of misdemeanor assault and harassment in mid-December. Disney now has to select: Recast the role of Kang or completely alter its plans for the MCU.
Rival DC Studios, with a similarly fervent fan base and similar challenges, appears to be headed in the fitting direction, tapping James Gunn (“Guardians of the Galaxy” and “The Suicide Squad”) and long-time DC film producer Peter Safran as co-heads of the studio in late 2022.
The pair has since developed a 10-year plan to reinvigorate its franchises across TV and film, including fresh spins on Superman and Batman.
The story is way the identical at Warner Bros.’ Harry Potter franchise. After the wild success of the eight Harry Potter movies, Warner Bros. tapped creator J.K. Rowling to develop a five-film series based on “Unbelievable Beasts and Where to Find Them,” a supplementary informational book about the several creatures within the Harry Potter universe.
While the primary film performed well on the box office, generating greater than $800 million globally, the remaining of the franchise saw diminishing returns and demanding reception faltered.
Warner Bros. is attributable to release fourth and fifth installments of the series, though it has provided few specifics. It also intends to remake the unique Harry Potter novels right into a 10-season television series for the corporate’s streaming platform Max, expected in 2025 or 2026.
Star Wars, meanwhile, is about to release two movies in 2026 — one in May and one in December — seven years after the last Star Wars film arrived in cinemas.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal is the distributor of the Jurassic World movies.
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