While a lot of attention is being placed squarely on The Rise of Skywalker right now – even though we still don’t know a whole lot about it – there are still plenty of developments taking place outside of the realm of movies. At least three Star Wars TV shows are in the works for Disney Plus (The Mandalorian, a Rogue One prequel and a seventh season of The Clone Wars), and there’s an entire series of comic books that are being put out on a regular schedule.
Unfortunately, however, even though the franchise is keeping busy, it looks like it hasn’t been enough to drive sales of merchandise. As Cosmic Book News reports, Disney recently revealed (through their third-quarter earnings report) that there’s been a decrease in Star Wars merchandise.
Interestingly, last year, the company reported that revenue for the Consumer Products division had dropped 4 percent from 2017, and was down over 15 percent from 2016 – these include merch and sales from Marvel Comics as well.
“The increase at our consumer products business was due to growth at our merchandise licensing and retail businesses. Growth at merchandise licensing was primarily due to higher revenue from merchandise based on Toy Story, partially offset by a decrease from Star Wars merchandise. The increase at our retail business was due to higher comparable store sales and online revenue.”
That being said, the drop in revenue might not come as a surprise to some. After all, there was no tentpole release during last year’s holiday season to help buoy sales, and the fact that Solo: A Star Wars Story bombed at the box office probably didn’t help, either.
With the upcoming release of Episode IX – which is to be the last entry in the so-called Sequel Trilogy – we wouldn’t be surprised if sales started to pick up soon, especially since it’s due out around Christmas time. There’s also a good chance that, by then, the hype surrounding Avengers: Endgame will have died down and fans will begin to shift their attention back towards Star Wars.
