The Acolyte Cost Disney More Than We Thought
That Park Place has an exclusive report showing that The Acolyte, the latest Disney+ Star Wars series which was canceled a month ago, went tens of millions of dollars over its already astronomical budget. For reference, Obi-Wan Kenobi had a budget of $90 million, and The Book of Boba Fett cost around $15 million per episode and $105 million overall. The Acolyte, an untested property with mostly unknown characters set decades before the prequel trilogy, was said by Leslye Headland to cost $180 million. It’s already strange for Disney and Lucasfilm to invest twice as much in new characters as established ones like Obi-Wan and Boba Fett. Still, apparently, $180 million doesn’t even cover the extent of spending on The Acolyte. Evidently, the show cost closer to £172 million in British pounds, or $131 million. These figures come straight from the Walt Disney Company’s UK branch and their tax documents. You can check that out here, courtesy of That Park Place:
The Acolyte has eight episodes, putting each installment’s budget at about $28.75 million. These tax filings only include what Disney spent on The Acolyte prior to September 24, 2023, so these numbers are subject to change again in the future. This is all the more egregious given the show’s poor showing on Disney+, failing to make it into Nielsen’s overall top 10. The Acolyte broke into the Nielsen Top 10 Original Streaming list at 488 million watch minutes before disappearing in week four, or when episode 5, “Night,” aired. The finale, “The Acolyte,” made it on the list at 335 million watch minutes, but that didn’t save the show from cancellation after such a poorly performing season.
Kathleen Kennedy spoke with The New York Times back in May in an article about The Acolyte’s budget. As expected, she chalked the criticisms up to sexism:
“My belief is that storytelling does need to be representative of all people. That’s an easy decision for me.”
She continued, “Operating within these giant franchises now, with social media and the level of expectation — it’s terrifying. I think Leslye has struggled a little bit with it. I think a lot of the women who step into ‘Star Wars’ struggle with this a bit more. Because of the fan base being so male dominated, they sometimes get attacked in ways that can be quite personal.”
I’ll never understand why Disney and Lucasfilm keep doing this, using gender, race, and sexuality as a shield for bad writing. Sure, you temporarily demonize people who didn’t enjoy a TV show or whatever the case may be. But those people are still jaded and not buying your products, so you lose the same amount of money. I know nobody at Disney is going to come out and say The Acolyte sucks or that spending $131 million on it was a mistake; the series’ cancellation is as close as we’ll ever get to that. But constantly blaming poor content on your fans–your customers–is a strange business strategy and not one that seems to be paying off for them.
Even if The Acolyte was a good show, which is already a big if, I don’t understand where all this money went. There are some pretty shots in The Acolyte, but they’re few and far between. Most of the actors are unknown or, at the very least, not A-listers. I find it suspicious for this show, in particular to be so much more expensive than other Disney+ productions. I don’t know if this is a sign of incompetence, trickery, or just poor money management.
But what do you think? Did you watch The Acolyte? Did you like it, and does any of this financial mumbo jumbo sound legitimate to you? Let us know in the comments below!
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Comments (1)
Don’t care about gender or race, but about good storytelling and professional execution. I don’t even really care if it’s woke, if there is something to it, but this show did not have it. The budget for this show and ROP are both so high, that you gotta wonder if it’s done to justify killing off the whole industry.
Of all people, John Campea went on a rant the other day about how the movies biz in particular is dying by suicide. Big coming from him, since it’s his whole life and he sees it burning down. Good for him on that.
Star Wars Theory just had a very good interview with writer Stuart Beattie. Did you know that you could commission some of the very top writers for like 30K? That is within reach of any fandom if they want another book. That’s a side note, but to see the fandom start to contact talented writers direct is inspirational. You already see how fast Ai is taking off. I see accusations that it is boring, but to me, those are comments of fear from within the industry because Ai is just getting started and in it’s infancy. If fandoms start producing content, we already know just listening to the geekouts on streams is sometimes a better experience than these shows, so who knows what’s coming?
The Acolyte was unwatchable to me, so I scrolled thru it. The finances to it make no sense to me. What it tells me, is that when you are in a hole, stop digging. They also thew a ton of money at those Rey movies, and at least they looked very good, but no amount of looking good can really make up for a lackluster story and characters. One of the only ones that did that, overwhelmed me with looks, was probably Avatar 2, but TV can’t really give that IMAX 3D experience.