Whether the Coronavirus pandemic influenced their decision or not, which it more than likely did after the theatrical industry took a massive hit throughout the vast majority of 2020, Disney claimed that original streaming content was going to become the number one priority moving forward, and they backed those words up substantially by announcing a huge slate of original projects set within their biggest franchises.
Obviously, Star Wars is going to be key to this continued expansion given its status as one of the Mouse House’s most popular and beloved brands, not to mention the fact that The Mandalorian is far and away the biggest in-house hit Disney Plus has ever produced. After all, during season 2, it was five times more popular than anything else on the platform.
While we won’t be seeing the next run until the first quarter of 2022 at the earliest, there are still three major Star Wars shows coming down the pipeline before the end of this year. The Book of Boba Fett arrives in December, with Temuera Morrison’s legendary bounty hunter taking center stage, as Robert Rodriguez joins the creative dream team of Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni to executive produce.
Meanwhile, The Mandalorian has resulted in a huge surge in popularity for The Clone Wars and Rebels, so the timing for The Bad Batch couldn’t be better. The animated spinoff hasn’t been given an official release date yet, but the studio debuting an action-packed trailer last month would indicate that it isn’t too far away.
And last but not least is Star Wars: Visions, an anthology of animated short films, with each of the ten installments hailing from a different filmmaker. Between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars, then, there are plenty of Disney Plus originals coming this year, which will ensure the subscriber base only keeps getting bigger.
