Star Wars Television

This morning Lucasfilm finally gave us our first, brief look at the long-awaited second season of Andor. As well as hinting at the conflicts to come, both internally and against the Empire alike, in doing so it also quietly teased another teeny bit of the old Star Wars Expanded Universe making its way back onto screens.

That teeny bit is actually not-so teeny, physically speaking. It’s the ship that Cassian is seen stealing during the snippet: a TIE Fighter with a familiar design that will immediately be recognizable by any old school fans of classic PC flight sims in the form of TIE Fighter‘s TIE Avenger. And if the ship is anything like it used to be in the EU, then Cassian is pilfering quite the mean little starfighter.

What Is the TIE Avenger?

First introduced in the 1994 classic TIE Fighter, the Avenger was one of several successful production descendants of the TIE Advanced prototype flown by Darth Vader in A New Hope. That includes the TIE Defender, canonized in current continuity during the events of Star Wars Rebels. In-game, the Avenger enters deployment after the events of the Battle of Hoth take place in Empire Strikes Back, as the Empire began moving fighter design away from the sheer overwhelming scale of mass-produced standard TIEs—trading defense for maneuverability and numbers—to a series of more specific lines of fighter ships that could counter the Rebel fleet’s similarly designed attack wings, as well as the Alliance’s hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.

The Avenger played a major role in the narrative of TIE Fighter‘s story campaign, before making appearances in its successor games X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance as a playable ship. But while Andor season two will mark the first time we’ve seen a TIE Avenger in the contemporary Star Wars continuity, it’s not the first time the ship has been acknowledged in the rebooted canon, having been previously mentioned in reference books.

Originally spotted by Aldo on Twitter, on the Disney+ mobile app, the tile advertising Andor has been updated to reflect the upcoming season's release date, with the bottom of the poster for the show reading "Season 2 coming April 22." In addition to marking two years and five months after the season 1 finale, which aired in November 23, 2022, this release date will come hot on the heels of the fan convention Star Wars Celebration. The next convention takes place between April 18 and April 20, 2025, leaving just a two-day hiatus between the end of the event and the premiere of the new season.

In recent years, more extraneous parts of Star Wars lore have been welcomed back into the saga’s main continuity. Shows like The Mandalorian and Ahsoka have been a treasure-trove of references to lesser-explored areas of the galaxy’s mythos, whether it’s the live-action debuts of Krrsantan and Grand Admiral Thrawn, a glimpse of the Mythosaur, or the arrival of the Dark Troopers. But one part of Star Wars history that isn’t considered canon anymore – and so far hasn't been welcomed back in – is the pair of Ewok movies, Caravan Of Courage and The Battle For Endor. The two made-for-TV films were released in the mid-‘80s, and now have a home on Disney+, even if they’re not part of the official story these days. But if you have a soft spot for Wicket's adventures, buckle up: one species from The Battle For Endor is about to make a comeback.

Speaking to Empire in a director’s roundtable interview for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, filmmaker David Lowery revealed that the Teek – the super-speedy Endor natives – will be making a comeback in his episode. And yes, they’ll be conjured with practical effects. “I was most excited about having hand puppets on set,” says Lowery. “It’s the most ancient technology being used with the most cutting-edge technology, simultaneously. That combination was absolutely magical. There’s a character in my episode that’s […] the Teek, from Battle For Endor. And it’s just a little hand puppet! It’s just (wiggles hand). I was like, ‘Is he gonna get digitally touched up, or replaced?’ No, in the final episode it’s just a hand puppet in the middle of this crazy Volume set. The cognitive dissonance of seeing those two things together, live in front of you, is absolutely incredible.”

According to Lowery, his episode of Skeleton Crew will be defined by those practical effects. Asked to sum up his Star Wars instalment in a single word, he said: “I teased it already: ‘Puppets’.” The Ewok movie comeback begins here.

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

The two biggest news items in there, I’d say:

Ahsoka saw a decline of 829 million minutes for its debut, around Mando season 3 levels, to 570 million for the rest of its run. But still, season 2 is happening, and it will go into production next year, leaving a sprawling gap between seasons of the show. Almost three years, most likely.

The report says that the Mandalorian and Grogu movie is replacing season 4 of The Mandalorian, rather than joining it, where THR says “it also looks like Disney spent many years and untold capital struggling develop a new Star Wars movie and its best idea was an extra-long episode of a TV show.”

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The end result on the TV side is…there is literally one show that is still considered to be actively ongoing, Ahsoka, and that second season will arrive almost three years after the first. Andor has season 2 coming but it’s over after that. Skeleton Crew has to perform well to be renewed and we have no idea what it’s budget is.

Despite Disney speaking to various media outlets about The Acolyte being cancelled thanks to lack of viewership, its cast has been vocal about the harassment from toxic fans they believe are being rewarded by the killing of the show. And while it may indeed be a cost versus viewership decision, I am not entirely convinced the show’s death is set in stone.

The new evidence is from The Stranger himself, Manny Jacinto, who appears to not be giving up hope courtesy of a few quotes from DragonCon this past week.

In one clip he’s asked about one thing he wants to achieve before he dies, and he says, to much applause, season 2 of The Acolyte.

This joins an earlier quote that does not have an attached video where Jacinto reportedly told a fan they were still “fighting” for the show, indicating there still may be some talks behind the scenes about bringing it back in some form or another. The public video certainly lends credence to the idea that yes, this quote is real. The Acolyte would not be the first show to be un-cancelled but it remains a tall order given that viewership was low and the cost was high.

I’ve previously chimed in about all this with the idea that Disney does not need to spend a stupid amount of money on The Acolyte season 2 like they did with season 1. That reportedly cost $180 million and featured things like unnecessary CGI space battles when the best moments of the season were just two characters talking to each other or at its priciest, an extremely cool lightsaber fight in the jungle. The idea is if season 2 can work with a much smaller budget, maybe this can still happen.

What's confusing about this entire situation is that Disney and Lucasfilm apparently had plans for The Acolyte's future. Just last month at San Diego Comic Con, Lucasfilm Publishing announced spinoff books and comics related to The Acolyte, mainly focusing on the characters that died in the series. But the four main characters that are still alive -- twins Osha and Mae, Qimir and Vernestra -- are stuck on the shelf. So what does this mean exactly? Did Disney believe the deceased Yord and Jecki were far more worthy of investment? On the surface, that would be an easy guess. But the real problem lies with Disney and Lucasfilm succumbing to the pressure that the poisonous side of the Star Wars fandom laid on them.

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Story-wise, it wasn't going to be for everyone, but it was definitely for a lot of people. The amount of positive reviews by critics and Manny Jacinto acquiring new fans proved as such. But as more shows led by women, LGBTQ+ creatives and POC get canceled, it sends a signal to other networks or services that people aren't interested in their stories. It limits the amount of diversity allowed in the entertainment industry. It also permits the obscene animosity that's fragmented the Star Wars fandom. If Star Wars wants to continue to be a dominating franchise in this industry, it has to learn to take chances and stick with them. Otherwise, the world will move on while it's stuck in the past.

The story of The Acolyte will not continue, with Lucasfilm opting not to proceed with a second season of the Star Wars offshoot starring Amandla Stenberg, sources tell Deadline.

Word of the decision comes more than a month after the eight-episode first season of the series from creator, director, executive producer and showrunner Lesley Headland wrapped its run on Disney+.

It looks like The Book of Boba Fett may have been the last time we see Boba Fett in the Star Wars franchise, as star Temuera Morrison reveals that the spin-off show’s bad reception is the reason why he won't be in the upcoming movie The Mandalorian & Grogu.

"This show's reception does seem to have impacted the future of the character in the franchise," said Boba Fett actor Temuera Morrison at Fan Expo Chicago after confirming his character won't appear in the Mandalorian movie, as reported by Screen Rant. Morrison later added that he also hasn't received an update on The Book of Boba Fett regarding a possible season 2, suggesting season 1 could well have been the last time we saw his character.

Luna also relishes getting a chance to complete the full arc of the story with characters first introduced in the film back in 2016. “You're going to see why K-2 is so important in Rogue One,” Luna teases, “and how does he get to be such an important character for the Rebellion.”

Not only that, but the actor says that the final season of Andor will permanently change how people view the movie moving forward. “I think people watching Rogue One, after watching season 2, are going to see a different film. Everything will be signified differently knowing what had to happen for K-2 to be there. It's going to make you witness the journey of Rogue One in a different way, I think. And not just with K-2, but with many other characters. I think it'll be really cool.”

We don’t normally write a Newswire post just to tell you which TV show’s aren’t dead in development—we’d be here all day, starting alphabetically from Angry Birds Mystery Island and ending up at X-Men ’97—but there’s been some confusion circulating online this weekend about Disney+ and Donald Glover’s Lando TV show, and it felt worth getting out in front of.

Basically, Dear White People creator Justin Simien gave an interview to Collider this week (timed to his upcoming docuseries Hollywood Black) in which he talked about his time working on developing the Lando show, and the “true grief” he felt after being removed from the project, which was originally announced back in 2020. In July 2023, news broke that Glover and his regular writing partner, his brother Stephen, would be serving as sole writers on the show; at the time, it wasn’t clear why Simien was departing the project, but it’s clear now from his interview—in which he notes that he only learned he was being replaced on the series when he read about it in the trades—that it wasn’t a voluntary move. So when Simien says (per Collider) that the series “just wasn’t meant to be,” and that he’s been through “a true grieving process” for it, he’s talking specifically about his version of the show.

Now, there’s a whole other conversation to be had here about Glover’s track record with collaborative projects—it’s hard not to view this all in light of what happened with his and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Mr. And Mrs. Smith show, which pretty quickly became just his Mr. And Mrs Smith show—but the upshot of it is that the actual Lando series is, by all accounts, still a go at Disney+. None of this confusion is Simien’s fault—he was talking honestly about his time on the series, didn’t throw any shit Glover’s way, and has pretty obviously moved on, given that he’s now working on a show set in the other big Star ____ universe for Paramount—but we’ve seen people passing around the idea that the Lando show itself is dead, when, by all accounts, the Glovers are still working on it, so we thought we’d try to correct the mistake.

The much-anticipated Star Wars: Lando series, initially planned for Disney+, was set to bring back Donald Glover as the charming scoundrel Lando Calrissian. However, despite being well into development, the project was shelved, leaving fans and creators alike disappointed. Justin Simien, who was attached to helm the series, recently spoke with Collider's Christina Radish about the emotional journey of developing the show and coping with its abrupt cancellation, during an interview for his new docuseries Hollywood Black.

When Radish expressed her excitement about the potential series, Simien shared her sentiments. "Same," he responded, acknowledging the shared enthusiasm. He went on to describe the project's development stage before it was halted. "It was pretty developed. Yeah, there was a Bible, there was concept art, there were scripts, but it just wasn’t meant to be," Simien explained. The series had reached a significant level of readiness, but despite the extensive groundwork laid, it was ultimately shelved. Simien candidly discussed the emotional toll of losing such a project. "I get over it. I’m in therapy a lot," he admitted.

People Magazine has dropped the first images from the next Star Wars live-action TV series, Skeleton Crew, revealing that the Jude-Law-starring adventure series will hit Disney+ December 3.

The new story gives us our first concrete details about the Jon Watts series, described as an adventure show where a group of young children—Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), KB (Kyriana Kratter), Neel (Robert Timothy Smith, playing a young Ortolan), and Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong)—making a mysterious discovery on their home planet, setting them off on an inadvertent quest across the galaxy. One that sets them up in a chance encounter with a mysterious guide, Jod Na Nawood, played by Jude Law.

“It is a fun place to be, the universe of Star Wars,” Law told People. “And there are great references to old films and recent episodes and series. There’s a lot of originality and I hope that will bring the feeling of fun to those who watch it.”

The new images—which include our first official look at the show, including lots of speeder bikes, apparently a major element of the series for the kids to get about from place to place—also introduce Skeleton Crew‘s main droid character, SM-33, who will be voiced by Nick Frost. “He’s like a rusty old, cranky droid that sort of reluctantly helps the kids along the way,” Watts told People. “The other thing about him is that he’s the first mate of a mysterious ship.”

The Acolyte season 2 hasn't been confirmed by Star Wars just yet, but fans are campaigning hard for more.

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The finale recently hit Disney Plus, and it saw Osha join Qimir after killing Sol, Mae have her memory wiped, and cameos from both Darth Plagueis and Grand Master Yoda.

Naturally, then, it seems there's still plenty of story left to tell, and showrunner Leslye Headland has already spoken about having ideas for the future. So, Star Wars fans have taken to Twitter with the hashtag #RenewTheAcolyte to try and get the show brought back for another season.

According to Hulu, there is over 350 hours of Star Wars content. It sounds like you have a lot of catching up to do (Popverse can help with that).

However, you don’t need to be familiar with any of that to watch the next Star Wars television series. Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is an upcoming series which is expected to stream on Disney+ later this year. The series is the brainchild of Christopher Ford and Jon Watts, the director behind Tom Holland’s Spider-Man trilogy.

Speaking to a crowd at CCXP Mexico City 2024, Watts revealed some details about the storyline.

"It’s about a group of kids that find a buried spaceship on their boring planet. They accidentally turn it on, get blasted off into the galaxy, and it’s the story about them trying to find their way back home.”

Since the storyline is being told from the kids’ perspective, you can watch Skeleton Crew without having ever seen any other Star Wars movies or television shows.

“You don’t need to have any prior Star Wars knowledge to enjoy it, but if you do, you can enjoy it on many levels.”

Of course, the television show will have adult characters too.

“Jude Law is in it too, and he’s great,” Watts said with excitement.

According to Lucasfilm, Law will be a Force-user, and the series will take place sometime after Return of the Jedi. Other than that, Watts wasn’t sure what he could say without getting in trouble.

The Acolyte has quickly become one of the most controversial Disney Plus Star Wars projects in the entire era, right up there with The Last Jedi. But all the hate and/or support aside, there is a simple question: Will The Acolyte get a season 2?

Ever since the last few excellent episodes I have gone from mixed on the show to a supporter, and no matter what happens in the finale, I’d like to see it continue. But I have to admit that seems exceedingly unlikely based on what we know.

No, it’s not about the show being woke or it being bashed by Star Wars YouTubers and their audiences. Rather, it’s pretty simple: Cost versus viewership.

Estimates of the cost of The Acolyte put it at $180 million for what are effectively eight, thirty minute episodes. That’s an absolutely wild amount of money for a Star Wars thing that is nowhere near theaters, but rather the sixth Disney live-action Star Wars series instead. And while I think the show has a solid aesthetic, no, it does not look like a $180 million production, and you have to wonder where much of that money went.

Then there’s viewership, where if it was a breakout smash hit, it might be worth spending that for another season. But it’s just not there, based on what we know. Disney does not give out official numbers but Nielsen says its premiere was half the viewership of Ahsoka and 75% lower than The Mandalorian. Reportedly, it’s the second-least watched show, also behind The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan. I cannot imagine it surged in popularity from there.

Before you say “well it’s just so bad, that’s why viewership is low,” you should know the least-watched show is Andor, universally praised as one of the best things in Star Wars history, even past the Disney era. It did in fact get a season 2, however, on a reported $250 million budget. Disney might have been okay doing that once given the sky-high reviews and massive praise for it, but The Acolyte certainly doesn’t have that, and no one is saying it’s anywhere close to the quality level of Andor.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/14672143

Latest Star Wars TV series The Acolyte proves that the Force is strong in Wales - after pivotal scenes were shot across Bannau Brycheiniog.

Starring Amandla Stenberg and Lee Jung-jae, the new Star Wars show brought a glimpse of sci-fi action to the national park - also known as the Brecon Beacons - as well as the south Wales valleys as the production spread across several locations in the country.

"We shot a lot in Wales," said showrunner Leslye Headland. "What was incredible about Wales was that, you know, you could shoot in a beautiful wooded area, but then if you moved up further, you’d be in snow."

Welcoming both Jedi and other Force users, Wales has officially become part of the galaxy far, far away for the very first time.

Spoilers and possible spoilers

Again, spoilers for Acolyte episode 5.

Lots of shocking things came out of this week’s episode of The Acolyte, but for me, one stands above the rest. It’s the fact that our new favorite maybe-Sith, the Stranger, is wearing a bronze helmet, not a black helmet.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen the episode already or at least one of the episodes with this creepy new villain so you have an idea of what he looks like. Well, after the episode, Hasbro released images of its replica version of the helmet and it’s bright bronze, which I found shocking. Watching the show, I thought it was black. Star Wars bad guys (Vader, Maul, Kylo, Palpatine) tend to like black.

The assumption here is one of two things. The most likely possibility is that, in the reality of the show, the helmet was bronze when it was new but has since been in so many battles that there’s significant damage, hence the discoloration. Another possibility is that the helmet is actually bronze on-set but, through lighting and movie magic, it just ends up looking black on screen. (We’ve actually reached out to Lucasfilm to try and clarify this and will update the post if or when we find out.)

Now, why is this interesting at all? Well because, as most Star Wars fans know, it’s happened before. In The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo’s jacket on Hoth looks blue on screen. In fact, it looks so blue on screen that when Kenner made toys of Han from those scenes, the toys wore blue. So, for a generation, everyone assumed the jacket was blue. However, it was later revealed the actual on-set jacket was brown. Debates rage to this day of which jacket is the real one, the one that was on set or the one we think we see?

For Junchang and the rest of “The Acolyte” stunt team, taking the cast from Jar Jar Binks to Jedi Master was no easy feat. It required months of coaching from over a dozen trainers, encompassing lightsaber practice, force training, movement work and hand-to-hand combat.

“Usually on a production, you’ll either have hand-to-hand or sword-based combat — this requires both,” says action designer Chris Cowan. “It was pretty difficult and intensive, because we had to run them through the gamut.”

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Jedi training for “The Acolyte” was scheduled three times a week in three-hour blocks. For the first month, it was “just basics,” according to stunt coordinator Mark Ginther. “Kicks and basic punches,” he says. “When we start doing fight choreography, or if we’re on set and we got to make a change, we’re going to need to know they have the basics.”

After mastering the fundamentals, each cast member worked with a designated trainer to learn their character’s specific moves. Sparring sessions were also frequent, during which the actors donned pads and fought their instructors in full-contact simulations.

“We want them to feel the real pain [of the hits], so their muscles can get used to it,” Junchang says. “Once they feel the pain, they know, ‘Oh, this is real. If they kick me, I have to block, I have to move. Otherwise, I’m getting hurt.'”

For the record, I don't think The Acolyte is the best Star Wars TV show ever made. I'm genuinely interested in the era, but it's sometimes seemed a little faltering, and I think the episodic structure hasn't always worked to the show's favor. But I've seen the Star Wars Holiday Special, and The Acolyte most certainly isn't worse than that. When you look at the actual reviews, the comments are often wince-worthy; I randomly took a sample of 30 into an AI-checker, and all but one came through as probably written by AI rather than by real humans.

In other words, there's a very vocal part of the Star Wars fanbase that has decided to hate The Acolyte no matter what. These are the trolls who've wrested statements from Leslye Headland and star Amandla Stenberg out of context, trying to find ways to anger viewers before the show's release. These trolls are now working overtime to create an online "discourse" that's far from reality.

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The Acolyte has been something of a mixed bag so far, but episode 5 is a game-changer in terms of sheer quality. This episode featured some of the best lightsaber combat I've seen since Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, perhaps bettered only by the Ahsoka-Maul animated duel in Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 7. The fight choreography was stunning, and all the more impressive given much of it really was performed by the cast of The Acolyte; Manny Jacinto in particular deserves high praise.

If you'll pardon a technical observation, this was also shot with tremendous skill. Star Wars has often struggled with nighttime action scenes, especially when lightsabers are involved; the LED lighting causes problems, an especially pronounced issue with blue light. But The Acolyte episode 5 is beautifully shot, with the lighting carefully controlled to make sure everything can be seen perfectly. It was delightful, and a massive improvement from previous Lucasfilm stumbles such as the Obi-Wan Kenobi finale.

The tremendous quality of The Acolyte episode 5 puts the lie to the review-bombers. It serves as a reminder that it's best not to attack until a show has finished, until it has been given a chance; these are instead people who had long since made up ther minds, resolving to hate The Acolyte simply because it is somehow "woke." The sheer scale of their actions - review-bombing, AI, and death threats - already seemed as though it was out of all proportion. The Acolyte episode 5 seals the deal, proving that is the case.