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The second season of Star Wars the Acolyte has been cancelled. Hurray!
Why celebrate a cancellation? Isn’t that a bit off? Because it demonstrates that detractors of Disney’s strategy aren’t simply the loud minority they are often dismissed as. They do represent a major part of the audience with real financial power. That has now simply stopped watching. And someone, somewhere at Disney won’t let show runners throw an unlimited amount of money down a black hole just for the show runner’s own satisfaction. Good.
The Acolyte show garnered some acclaim and fans to be sure — few shows have zero fans at all — but obviously a long way away from enough to justify another expenditure of $180 million+ on a Season 2. That’s expensive by any measure. It’s absolutely fine to make small shows for small audiences… but those need to be done on small budgets too. There is no entertainment charity.
So what’s this myth of Audience Purchase I mentioned in the title? That after purchasing a franchise, that logo and look can be put on an unlimited number of show and products of whatever quality and they will all be successes because the audience is obligated to keep purchasing future products based on their like for the previous ones. The audience and their income has been purchased, not the Intellectual Property.
But here’s another data point to counter that. A failure of a show that won’t be seen again.
