Though a $100 million Memorial Day weekend would be nothing to scoff at for your typical movie, it was far below what was expected from Solo: A Star Wars Story, the tenth entry in the saga from that galaxy far, far away, which has always blasted through the box office. Why has it fallen so short of expectations, though? Well, there are probably several factors, but one that’s being discussed a lot is the threat of franchise fatigue. After all, The Last Jedi only came out five months ago.
With that perceived to be the problem, you’d imagine that Disney and Lucasfilm would be in the midst of rethinking their release strategy for Star Wars pics in the future. That’d be the smart thing to do, right? Well, apparently that’s not quite the case, as the studios are actually heading in the opposite direction, with a whopping 9 different movies said to be in development. At least, that’s according to Tom Kane.
The voice actor, who’s worked on a number of Star Wars projects, including voicing Yoda in The Clone Wars and Admiral Ackbar in The Last Jedi, reportedly told a fan at All-Star Comic-Con that Lucasfilm is moving full steam ahead with projects involving that galaxy far, far away. And while he wouldn’t name any of them specifically, he did reveal that unfortunately, the aforementioned Yoda will not be receiving his own movie.
We don’t need to tell you that this is very troubling to hear. Sure, we love Star Wars just as much as everyone else does, but as we said above, the threat of franchise fatigue is real right now. The MCU this is not, and Solo proved that you can’t keep shoving these films out the door and expect people to go see them just because they have the iconic franchise’s name in the title. Fans want each release to feel like a special event, and when you have Ron Howard’s Anthology pic hitting theaters just several months after The Last Jedi, that’s not the case.
Of course, given that this is coming from someone on Twitter who spoke with Kane, and not directly from Kane himself, or even Lucasfilm, there’s every chance something got lost along the way or perhaps the actor was misquoted. But if the studio truly does have that many Star Wars movies in various stages of development, it means they likely intend to keep releasing them at the same rate and if that’s the case, then franchise fatigue is going to set in very, very soon, that’s for sure.
