Word from a galaxy far, far away is the Star Wars Anthology movies are on indefinite hold…

Le sigh…

It looks like Solo: A Star Wars Story’s failure to light up the box-office (it’s estimated to have lost Lucasfilm/Disney in the ballpark of $80m) has triggered Disney into playing it safe with the next Anthology movie(s).

How safe? Well, they’re on hold, that’s how safe.

So, the deal, according to ‘Sources with knowledge of the situation’, is that Lucasfilm/Disney have decided to focus on Star Wars Episode IX and the following trilogy, rather than the Obi-Wan and Boba Fett movies, both of which were reportedly in pre-production.

So, what happened?

Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of months, you’ll already have an idea of what happened: Solo: A Star Wars Story, unlike The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, opened in May, which some are saying was bad for the movie, given that it opened around the same time as Infinity War and Deadpool 2 and that Star Wars is a Christmas event now.

Well, look, nothing should compete with Star Wars, certainly not to the point that it causes it to lose money! Secondly, Episodes I-VI all came out in May, so, no, Star Wars was always a summer event.

Next, some are claiming that it suffered due to Star Wars fatigue… which, yeah, ok, two movies in six months IS unprecedented for Star Wars, but look, Marvel is dropping a movie every second weekend these days and they are all performing, and Star Wars fans, until recently, would have partied in the streets at the very notion of two movies so close together.

So why aren’t they?

Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?

One reason, which no-one seems to be saying, but to hell with it, we will, is that The Last Jedi left many fans with a bad taste in their mouths. A bad taste that wasn’t helped when top brass involved in the movie like Rain Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy got many fans’ backs up by saying things like ‘we don’t need the old fans anymore’ and calling anyone who didn’t like it ‘man-babies’.

And sure, a lot of these responses came from a hardcore bunch of fans getting out of hand with abusive and sometimes sexist and racist comments – all of which is pathetic; if you  feel that much hatred in your life over a movie (or at all), then you need to take a long and hard look at yourself – however, the responses also upset a lot of the fans who had legitimate (to them) reasons not to like the movie. Heck, even I only watched it twice in the cinema (I saw The Force Awakens 12 times for contrast).

And so, because of all this, many fans decided to boycott Solo.

And, even when the studio said that a boycott by fans wouldn’t hurt the movie as it’s the casual cinema goers that make the difference, I believe this isn’t true… I believe the boycott DID damage Solo.

Look, everytime I went to see The Force Awakens and Rogue One, I went with a bunch of friends or my wife and kids, so that being repeated across the fandom is going to hurt.

And that’s why, I believe, Solo failed to make magic.

And here’s the real tragedy, the fans that did go to Solo seemed to really like it… I loved it; really I did. The problem is that not enough fans did the same. And the really frustrating thing is that I, personally, want to see where the Antholoy movies go more than I want to see where the new core trilogy goes.

Han, Luke and Leia are dead in the main movies, but they aren’t in the Anthology movies. On top of this, as the end of Solo proved, there was going to be a big new story told in those movies (possibly in the background), one which would pull together the original trilogy, the prequels and the new movies.

And dammit, I want to see that! As much as like Finn, Rey and Poe, it’s the other characters and the other periods in the Star Wars lore that still has me.

If Lucasfilm DO listen, as we’re told they do, they need to get the Obi-Wan movie up and running; fans have been crying out for that for years; continue the story set up in Solo in the background, give us the Galaxy we all grew up in and love.

Or hey, maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe the fans didn’t boycott this movie because of the dumpster fire that has become the Star Wars community since the Last Jedi divided us in a way Jar Jar never could. Maybe it was too soon for another Star Wars movie. Maybe summer isn’t a good time for Star Wars after all.

It could be all these things

But it’s not.

In the meantime, Last Jedi director Ryan Johnson is working on a new trilogy while the Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss are working on a new series of movies  too.

And all the #McGregorForObiWan fans are just sitting, waiting, wondering if the movie they’ve been hearing about and praying for for years will ever happen.

We’re not going to get the Star Wars we want, it seems, but rather the Star Wars we deserve.

Let us know your thoughts in the usual ways, gang.

Source: Collider