Disney likely axed The Acolyte because of soaring costs

[Karlston]

The Star Wars spinoff's costs topped $230.1 million halfway through post-production.

A mysterious assassin is targeting Jedi masters in The Acolyte. Credit: Disney+

 

We had mixed feelings about the news in August that Disney+ had cancelled its Star Wars spinoff series The Acolyte after just one season. At the time, it seemed steadily declining ratings were to blame, particularly given the high production costs. More budgetary details have trickled out since then, indicating that the streaming series spent far more than previously reported, topping $230.1 million—roughly $28.7 million per episode—before post-production had even been completed. That's significantly more than the original $180 million reported budget, or about $22.5 million per episode.

 

The show received solid-to-lukewarm critical reviews, although a review-bombing campaign hurt the series' standing on Rotten Tomatoes among user reviews. As we previously noted, from the start, The Acolyte was a bit of a departure from a typical Star Wars series, weaving in elements from wuxia films and detective stories while remaining true to the established Star Wars aesthetic and design. That alone made it an intriguing effort, with fresh characters and new takes on classic Star Wars lore. And the martial arts-inspired fight choreography was clever and fun to watch—especially in the shocking, action-packed fifth episode ("Night").

 

But there were some obvious shortcomings as well, most notably the clunky dialogue—although that's kind of a long-standing attribute of the Star Wars franchise. The pacing lagged at times, and there was a surprisingly high body count among the central characters. All these contributed to the lukewarm critical reviews.

 

And in the end, the ratings just weren't strong enough, especially for a Star Wars project. The Acolyte garnered 11.1 million views over its first five days (and 488 million minutes viewed)—not bad, but below Ahsoka's 14 million views over the same period. But those numbers declined sharply over the ensuing weeks, with the finale earning the dubious distinction of posting the lowest minutes viewed (335 million) for any Star Wars series finale.

 

Writing at Forbes, Caroline Reid noted that The Acolyte was hampered from the start by a challenging post-pandemic financial environment at Disney. It was greenlit in 2021 along with many other quite costly series to boost subscriber numbers for Disney+, contributing to $11.4 billion losses in that division. Then Bob Iger returned as CEO and prioritized cutting costs. The Acolyte's heavy VFX needs and star casting (most notably Carrie Ann Moss and Squid Game's Lee Jung-jae) made it a pricey proposition, with ratings expectations to match. And apparently the show didn't generate as much merchandising revenue as expected.

 

As the folks at Slash Film pointed out, The Acolyte's bloated production costs aren't particularly eye-popping compared to, say, Prime Video's The Rings of Power, which costs a whopping $58 million per episode, or Marvel's Secret Invasion (about $35 million per episode). But it's pricey for a Star Wars series; The Mandalorian racked up around $15 million per episode, on par with Game of Thrones. So given the flagging ratings and lukewarm reviews, the higher costs proved to be "the final nail in the coffin" for the series in the eyes of Disney, per Reid.

 

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