The Acolyte Fallout: Merch Disappears From the Disney Store, High Republic May Be Canceled
On Monday, Disney canceled the Disney+ Star Wars series The Acolyte, which was surprising not because it was popular and had great ratings – it wasn’t, and it didn’t – but because it was a tacit admission to these uncomfortable truths by Disney, especially as it happened so quickly and that it was public. Robot Head made an X post pointing out that Disney usually doesn’t publicly cancel Star Wars shows or movies, instead preferring to drop them with no announcement and hope people eventually forget about them, presumably because it’s less embarrassing:
Is this the only Disney Star Wars show to be officially “Cancelled”? They usually just let every project including films just drift away. Why the rush to kill it this time? #TheAcolyte #StarWars https://t.co/rBzTThMtxS
— Robot Head (@iamrobothead) August 20, 2024
That’s a good point, and I think the answer is that they’re desperately trying to draw some goodwill from a fandom that is largely finished with Star Wars. Disney ran this property into the ground, with each of the sequel movies doing worse business than the previous one, the shows either failing to attract the audiences they needed or following the films and slowly losing the one they had. Disney has been making announcements like this recently to get fans excited about franchises they’d written off. The Marvel movies are floundering, and nobody cares about the boring new heroes, so here’s Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom! The Mandalorian lost all the excitement Luke’s return and the burgeoning Darksaber storyline generated by firing Gina Carano, ending the Luke and Baby Yoda story in three episodes of a different show, and handing over the Darksaber (and possibly future seasons of the show) to a more Lucasfilm-approved female character, so here comes a big screen movie called The Mandalorian and Grogu! The Acolyte sucks, nobody watches it, and the only people who made a dime from it are YouTubers who trashed it, so we’re canceling it at the beginning of the week for all to see! “See? We get it! Please disregard the last decade of lore-destroying trash; we know what you guys want, and we’re going to give it to you!” And, more to the point in The Acolyte’s case, what we don’t want.
To that end, Disney not only canceled The Acolyte , but it’s scrubbing the show’s existence from their company. That means the merch is gone; the Disney Store has removed all of the Acolyte merchandise from its website, with searches turning up nothing and links going to error messages. The first person to discover this appears to be an X user called Review Bomb, who made a video demonstrating that there are no Acolyte products at the Disney Store anymore, at least online:
I heard that The Acolyte merch is missing from the Disney store. So, I went and checked it out for myself. Here is what I found. @realswtheory @starwars#StarWars #TheAcolyte #Movies #SaveTheAcolyte pic.twitter.com/LdVinxRggk
— Review Bomb (@ReviewbombAdam) August 22, 2024
Did you happen to look at the number of products next to each entry when he searched for The Acolyte? The biggest by far was “Star Wars Classic,” which had 185 products; next was The Mandalorian, with 67, more than the rest of the entries aside from Star Wars Classic combined. It would be nice if Disney took a hint from this. Anyway, the removal of Acolyte merch is probably not just because the show was canceled; I can’t imagine it was selling, and Disney ditched it instead of letting it take up space that could be given to something people might buy. But the two are related: nobody wanted to watch The Acolyte, and nobody wanted a lesbian space witch t-shirt. As far as I know, Disney hasn’t announced this, which makes sense; it isn’t the same kind of statement as canceling the show, just insult added to injury. But it’s suggestive of Disney acknowledging that nobody likes Leslye Headland’s foray into the Star Wars universe.
There’s also a rumor that Disney is canceling The High Republic, the series of novels and comic books set in the era 100-500 years before the prequels. The Acolyte took place towards the end of the High Republic era and was supposed to be the transition of this from books to the more mainstream shows and movies. But The Acolyte bombed and was canceled, and now, The High Republic may be scrapped as well, although it won’t end immediately so much as taper off over the next two years, likely burning off whatever books are in the pipeline. This one comes from WDW Pro, who talked about it on today’s episode of his podcast, The Pro Show:
Interestingly, Pro says earlier in the podcast that Disney brought the Acolyte merch back to the Disney Store website, but I just checked, and it’s not there. I wonder if someone on the marketing end is dithering over this decision. At any rate, scrapping The High Republic makes sense, too, especially if Disney wants Lucasfilm to change direction on Star Wars. When Chris Gore reported about the Marvel sea change, he said Lucasfilm was too far gone to follow suit, but maybe Disney is laying down the law with them and forcing them to fix Star Wars as much as possible (which is very little, if at all). That’s just guesswork, though, and I won’t believe that until I see something tangible. But at the very least, they know their contributions to Star Wars – which is like calling arson a contribution to home decor – aren’t working for fans.
UPDATE: Disney has now returned four Acolyte shirts to the Disney Store website, although by the time I’m done typing this, they may be gone again.
What do you make of Disney removing Acolyte merch from the Disney Store and possibly canceling The High Republic? Let us know in the comments!
Comments (2)
I have no idea, but I suspect they are. A lot of YouTubers were using her in thumbnails for a while, and now, I think they’re happy any time she’s in the news again.
I didn’t know Chris Gore and Alan Ng were doing a season 2. That should be fun, and I’m sure they’re right about being able to do better than Disney/Lucasfilm, faint praise though that is.
Disney deserves every lost penny for trying to force stuff the customers made clear they didn’t want. That’s not how any sane person does business, and it’s hilarious that Bob Iger appears to be looking for a way out. At the same time, the shareholders brought their misfortune on themselves by constantly siding with Iger every time someone tried to do something about him.
I’m more into Alan and Chris from Film Threat doing a stop motion Season 2 with the action figures. It almost makes me think that pulling merch was to prevent Chris’s content of making a stop motion action figure Season 2 which he is going to do to show that he can do better with a few hundred bucks, than a show with a nonsensical cost of over 100 million dollars.
Cancelling The High Republic makes all the sense in the world. It’s the same with like Ms. Marvel or Dustborn. You can see how Fink and BlackRock might want to force this stuff but none of it makes any business sense. They are trying to groom people to be feminized. Trying to bombard feminized content, so that it will payoff a generation from now. It might have worked since Western kids are targeted and they are actually the minority now, so the hate of Fink, Mayorkas and others may have paid off.
Creativity is like that, you can go ahead and do trial and error, but only things that sell higher than expected should proceed to the next level. High Republic is a great name, but nothing about it worked. It didn’t sell. It didn’t earn. It makes no sense to me that they didn’t pay Karpyshyn more since KOTOR sold. Should have hired him for six figs or more just to make High Republic content in his own way. He has a track record of success.
On a side note, it would be interesting to be able to see click analytics around Sydney Sweeney and if that videos featuring her picture are clicked on more than normal videos. That would be another way to see what’s hot.