The Acolyte

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

Not surprised. Business is business.

 

In terms of numbers, D+ is now profitable.
To be exact… $47m of profit.

On revenue of $5.87 billion.

That’s a rounding error… or two episodes of a show that didn’t drive enough subs to wash its face.

 

Regardless of what anyone thought of the finished series - which I was okay with, if not enthralled, and it’s good for them to try different story styles …

 

…$180m for eight episodes is INSANE.

 

I’m aware that to be a Star Wars product, it has to look the business, but seriously? What did all that get blown on? 

[Triumphant]

Indeed.  While I personally enjoyed it, the show was clearly a complete miss with most of the fan base.  The Mouse ain't gonna foot the bill for that a second time. 🤷‍♂️

[Techwright]

4 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

In terms of numbers, D+ is now profitable.
To be exact… $47m of profit.

On revenue of $5.87 billion.

That’s a rounding error… or two episodes of a show that didn’t drive enough subs to wash its face.

That's crazy.  I don't have the numbers, but I could swear I read multiple articles back at the height of COVID lockdown that said D+ was wildly popular and heavily profitable, to the point that it was largely carrying the parent company during the shutdown.  IF that is accurate, this you referenced sounds like a downward line on the graph chart.

 

I have to wonder at some point if there will be a second tier to the "Legends" category: stuff that Disney released and was poorly received, therefore relegated to soft canon until a full-canon replacement can be arranged.   The Acolyte would go on that shelf, probably Star Wars: Resistance (the animated series people have already largely forgotten) as well. One could hope-against-hope that the Sequel Trilogy ends up there as well.

 

There is another possibility, though I don't see it happening.  Get the writers to tighten a story, and continue it in a more practical-budgeted animation.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

There was definitely an explosion in D+ revenue in the pandemic - gotta keep the kidlets busy while you're teaching your idiot boss how to Zoom. And remember, Disney couldn't spend much on making new content for a good long time, only acquire it, or repurpose scheduled releases like Onward.

 

From launch in 2020 with 34 million users, D+ rocketed to around 130m by the end of 2021.

For comparison, Netflix were at 222m at that point. They were worried.

 

But then, D+ subscriber base peaked at around 164.2m in Q3 2022 (not including the Disney HotStar+ partnership, which got huge - at huge cost - by offering live Indian Premier League cricket.) Since then, they've stayed stable at around 150m users, but revenue per user has increased with higher subs and advertising pilots.

 

Again, for comparison, Netflix has increased subs to 260m in that time, but is much more profitable - around 18-25% of their revenue is profit.

(For the same period as the D+ ones above, Q2 2024, they earned $9.56bn and cleared $2.6bn, even if they use a couple of accounting tricks to get there.)

 

D+ might strike back by folding in ESPN+, which runs on similar tech - and has Monday Night Football, a good stable of US college sports, plus a whole bunch of other stuff. Might even tune in if they have the Ocho stuff in the UK. 

Edited August 20 by ThaOGDreamWeaver

[PeregrineFalcon]

People who really wanted Season 2 to happen are taking this really well:     🤣

 

 

 

Making and faking death threats? Really people? I think some folks need to learn how to internet better.

[Ghost]

8 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

People who really wanted Season 2 to happen are taking this really well:     🤣

 

 

 

Making and faking death threats? Really people? I think some folks need to learn how to internet better.

I’d be willing to bet that the majority of people on X who are upset about the cancellation, never even watched the show.

 

 

[Voltor]

So now comes the important question: Is the Star Wars Holiday Special better or worse then the Acolyte?

[TTRPGWhiz]

54 minutes ago, Voltor said:

So now comes the important question: Is the Star Wars Holiday Special better or worse then the Acolyte?

This is where the discourse is at, huh? 

[Techwright]

1 hour ago, Voltor said:

So now comes the important question: Is the Star Wars Holiday Special better or worse then the Acolyte?

Harvey Korman as an alien Julie Childs?  Sign me up!

[Ghost]

1 hour ago, Voltor said:

So now comes the important question: Is the Star Wars Holiday Special better or worse then the Acolyte?

Sorry, not sure there is anything worse than the Holiday Special

[PeregrineFalcon]

4 hours ago, Ghost said:

I’d be willing to bet that the majority of people on X who are upset about the cancellation, never even watched the show.

Yeah, if all of the people screaming about the show had actually watched the show then the ratings would have been high enough to earn it a second season.

 

[Oz The Elderly Gaymer]

On 6/19/2024 at 9:28 AM, Triumphant said:

 

I”ll try to lend a little clarity here.  This is what I think is happening and where the disconnect is:

 

Star Wars, in its original form (I’m talking about the original trilogy from the 70’s and 80’s here; the one that many of us, including myself, cut our teeth on when we were kids) is a product of its time.  It’s a traditional, Campbellian hero's journey, about a young man discovering that he’s the heir to a great heroic legacy, then going off to perform said heroic deeds. In this story, we have 1 female protagonist (Leia), 1 black protagonist (Lando- at least for the last two movies) and everyone else is a straight, white guy.  This is not uncommon for entertainment media of that era (and still not terribly uncommon now though, of course, that is rapidly changing- as indeed it should, IMO).

 

Most of the Star Wars fans who were cultivated during this era were (like myself) boys and young men.  The original Star Wars trilogy really was an adventure story written mostly for boys and men that was mostly about the adventures of boys and men (this is not a criticism; I love the original Star Wars Trilogy and will always love it.  When I tell people it’s white male-oriented entertainment, that’s just a fact.  Again, this is typical of entertainment media of the time we grew up in.)  So, a very large portion of the Star Wars fan base is composed of these straight, young, white men and boys that grew up watching the stuff.  No great surprise here, I think.  That is as it may be. 

 

But here’s the thing:  Some of the fan base (a much smaller subset, I think) are women, queer people,  and people of color that also love the franchise, for all of the same reasons that us straight white guys love it (high adventure, quippy dialogue, booming orchestral tracks, and dazzling special effects).  But, just like we straight white guys (again, understand- I am one of the straight white guys), women, queer people, and people of color would like to see other human beings like themselves represented in the fictional universe that they love.

 

So, what Leslye Headland and others mean when they say that “It’s not for you”, is that the show is not really written specifically to appeal to the (admittedly huge) part of the fan base that is composed of straight, white men.  This is a story set in the Star Wars universe that is meant to provide a space where fans who are women, queer, and people of color can enjoy a show about protagonists that represent people just like them.

 

And that’s okay.  There should be a space for stories set in the franchise that are not mainly about straight white guys.  We (meaning myself and other straight white guys) did not think there was anything wrong with having just one female protagonist, one black protagonist, and no queer protagonists in the OT.  It was pretty much just about the white guys, and that was fine by us.

 

But the problem is, now that we have a show that inverts that dynamic, all of us straight white guys are *blanking* our pants over it.  Now, I don’t think this is conscious.  What I mean by that, is I don’t think most straight, white men who are fans of the franchise are actively trying to be sexist/racist.  But subconsciously, I think they’re having a sexist/racist knee-jerk reaction to the inversion of the straight/white coded entertainment that is familiar and comfortable to them.

 

It actually reminds me of an anecdote from the late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  She related a story about  how she confided to some person that was interviewing her  that, one day, she would like to see a Supreme Court comprised of all-women judges.

 

The person interviewing her was shocked and scandalized by this.  Isn’t that a sexist position, Judge Ginsberg?  To which she replied (quite fairly, I think), that up until very recently in history, the Supreme Court had always been composed entirely of men, and the men seemed to be perfectly okay with that.  Why shouldn’t women get the same treatment?  Of course, she was really just trying to make a point here:  And that is that the unconscious (or overt- but many times I think it’s unconscious, because we men take our male-dominated world for granted and don’t often pause to think about it- or what it would feel like to live in a world as something other than the straight, white men that we are) hypocrisy of male thinking.

 

The reason Headland and others are upset is not because the fans are angry about this (they expected some of that, of course.  This fan base is  made up largely of straight, white guys, after all), but that they are being verbally savaged like dogs (one video by a guy I saw literally compared Headland, physically, to a Pug dog.  Why is this sort of petty, mean, and demeaning personal attack relevant to any criticism of the media itself, as a story or art form?)  The answer is, it’s not.  It’s a cruel, sexist attack on a female showrunner, by an outraged white guy that feels like his personal space is threatened.

 

That kind of thing is NOT okay and yes, of course Headland and other women (and queer, and brown) people pouring their creative hearts out into the show are angered by it (as, IMO, they should be).
 

I especially appreciate this response considering what we've seen with the backlash we've seen from a very specific demographic of 'fans' - the same demographic @Triumphant mentions above.

The Acolyte's actress Amandla Stenberg and showrunner Leslye Headland can now join Kellie Marie Tran, John Boyega, and Moses Ingram in seeing just how fickle these 'fans' are, I'd say. As for The Acolyte not being renewed for season 2, that's unfortunate.  I enjoyed the show for what it was - an attempt to tell a different sort of story in an Era we haven't seen in non-book form.

But where the 'discourse' actually is now in Star Wars is minority actors/actresses having to report hundreds of threats to their person to the FBI. 
 

[Ghost]

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Yeah, if all of the people screaming about the show had actually watched the show then the ratings would have been high enough to earn it a second season.

 

It’s the same as the WNBA

 

”they deserve more pay!”

- do you watch them?

”no”

[Excraft]

1 hour ago, Oz The Elderly Gaymer said:

I especially appreciate this response considering what we've seen with the backlash we've seen from a very specific demographic of 'fans' - the same demographic @Triumphant mentions above.

 

Again, blaming the fans doesn't work and doesn't change the fact that the show under-performed, so it was cancelled.  Had the show drawn in the viewership numbers it needed to renew, it would have been renewed.  It didn't.

 

And again, if you don't believe that there were and still are fans of the original Star Wars films who are women, LGBTQ, people of various races and ethnicity, you're absolutely fooling yourself.  If you don't believe characters like Leia and Padme weren't strong female leads who were absolutely integral to the story, were well written and developed characters and were characters women and young girls could identify with, you're absolutely fooling yourself.

 

1 hour ago, Oz The Elderly Gaymer said:

The Acolyte's actress Amandla Stenberg and showrunner Leslye Headland can now join Kellie Marie Tran, John Boyega, and Moses Ingram in seeing just how fickle these 'fans' are, I'd say. As for The Acolyte not being renewed for season 2, that's unfortunate.  I enjoyed the show for what it was - an attempt to tell a different sort of story in an Era we haven't seen in non-book form.

 

It's not the actors/actresses fault... it's the poor writing, direction and production.  There's nothing wrong with telling a story we haven't seen before.  The problem with The Acolyte is it didn't deliver on that promise, no matter how you slice it. 

 

To be fair, I watched a couple of episodes and I personally didn't find it as bad as some of the more colorful reviewers found it to be, but that's a matter of opinion.  Those people you mention who are quite clearly racist/misogynist in their social media posting are easily identified and even more easily ignored.   I personally don't care what race or gender a writer is.  It's their product that matters.

[PeregrineFalcon]

1 hour ago, Oz The Elderly Gaymer said:

But where the 'discourse' actually is now in Star Wars is minority actors/actresses having to report hundreds of threats to their person to the FBI.

I'm sorry but the "hundreds of threats" is just a lie.

 

Repeatedly these so called death threats turn out to be hoaxes, as I showed above, or just claims with no proof offered. In fact "I got death threats" has become the verbal defense constantly thrown up by internet folks now days anytime they face too much criticism.

 

And the fact is that the Star Wars fans aren't racist, no matter how much the wokesters wish we were. Billy Dee Williams, who played Lando Calrissian, didn't get threats from Star Wars fans. Just the opposite. Fans loved him and his character. And that was 44 years ago. We weren't racist then and we aren't racist now.

 

As opposed to the star of the Acolyte, Amandla Stenberg, who did an interview and said "white people crying was the goal." That kinda of open and blatant racism is typical of the wokies, isn't shared by Star Wars fans, and ya'll can't figure out why this show had the lowest ratings of any Star Wars show ever.

 

TL;DR: The ratings prove that most people did not like this show and rather than admit that fact the Woke are lying by accusing Star Wars fans of being racist, misogynist, homophobes, and by making up fake death threats.

[Frostbiter]

6 hours ago, Ghost said:

Sorry, not sure there is anything worse than the Holiday Special

 

 

 

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

10 hours ago, Techwright said:

Harvey Korman as an alien Julie Childs?  Sign me up!

I've seen that segment, and it's... deeply weird and unsettling.

See also: Bea Arthur as a Mos Eisley bartender belting out random showtunes.

 

But in a (threadbare) defence of that galactic monstrosity...

...it's the first time we ever run across a Mandalorian friend of ours.

 

And, of course, without it we'd have never had the GOTG Holiday Special.

 

[TTRPGWhiz]

I miss the days when "In Before The Lock" was a thing. 

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

6 minutes ago, TTRPGWhiz said:

I miss the days when "In Before The Lock" was a thing. 

 

My Googly-Sense is tingling!

[PeregrineFalcon]

Hopefully this will be my last post about The Acolyte. So a bunch of fans of The Acolyte contacted YouTube and tried to get a couple of YouTubers demonitized and/or kicked off of YouTube because they didn't like that these YouTubers had been saying bad things about The Acolyte. They seemed to blame these content creators for The Acolyte's cancellation.

 

 

Spoiler

Their attempt failed.

[Ghost]

15 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Hopefully this will be my last post about The Acolyte. So a bunch of fans of The Acolyte contacted YouTube and tried to get a couple of YouTubers demonitized and/or kicked off of YouTube because they didn't like that these YouTubers had been saying bad things about The Acolyte. They seemed to blame these content creators for The Acolyte's cancellation.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Their attempt failed.

Fans of the show did this?

So what’s that, like 40 people?

 

In all seriousness, it’s that same BS from a few years ago all over again - only this time “cancelling” someone for having the nerve to disagree, is no where near as effective.

[PeregrineFalcon]

13 hours ago, Ghost said:

In all seriousness, it’s that same BS from a few years ago all over again - only this time “cancelling” someone for having the nerve to disagree, is no where near as effective.

Yep. And these are the same people who think that they are morally superior to everyone else, while also calling people the entire list of -ists and -phobes for the crime of simply NOT watching a movie or TV show or video game that they like.

 

Oh, and don't forget all of the fake death threats that they get caught writing themselves in an attempt to frame us as horrible people. And this is why, in answer to a question that someone asked earlier in this thread, I keep posting this much about a show that I don't watch. Because I want everyone to see who the real life villains actually are.

[ZacKing]

9 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Oh, and don't forget all of the fake death threats that they get caught writing themselves in an attempt to frame us as horrible people. And this is why, in answer to a question that someone asked earlier in this thread, I keep posting this much about a show that I don't watch. Because I want everyone to see who the real life villains actually are.

 

Amen, not to mention how dangerous that is for everyone.