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Topics: Disney, Star Wars, Lucasfilm, TV And Film
Disney confirmed the real reason as to why The Acolyte was cancelled last year, and we all missed it.
The Acolyte was one of Disney Plus’ biggest shows of last year, set about a century before the events of the Star Wars prequel trilogy and telling a new story detailing the Jedi and Sith conflict.
While there were a few issues, The Acolyte was a show that brought some interesting ideas and a few knockout acting performances to the wider Star Wars canon.
Unfortunately, despite strong ratings and excellent critical reviews, the show was cancelled not long after the season finished premiering.
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Star Wars haters will try to convince you that the show was cancelled due to it allegedly being “woke”, presumably because it featured female characters and people of colour.
But obviously, that’s not the reason why it was cancelled.
In a Vulture article from last December, co-chair of Disney Entertainment Alan Bergman confirmed the real decision behind The Acolyte’s cancellation.
“So as it relates to Acolyte, we were happy with our performance,” Bergman said.
“But it wasn’t where we needed it to be given the cost structure of that title, quite frankly, to go and make a season two. So that’s the reason why we didn’t do that.”
The Acolyte had a budget of around $230 million. For context, that makes it the second-highest budget Star Wars show to date, only coming behind Andor which had a budget of $250 million.
However, the show was originally allocated a budget of $180 million, and therefore went over-budget. This was the bigger reason that impacted the show’s future.
To compare it against other shows, Star Wars Skeleton Crew allegedly cost $136 million to produce, while The Mandalorian cost about $120 million per season.
So, even taking the original budget into account, it was still far more expensive than some of the other Star Wars shows Disney commissioned.
That’ll open it up to a lot more scrutiny by the suits at the top than if it was cheaper to make.