Star Wars: Visions, The Mandalorian, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka, Andor, The Acolyte…how many Star Wars shows is too many Star Wars shows?
Yesterday, Disney+ subscribers were treated to Star Wars: Visions, a new anthology series that tasked several animators with telling unique stories set in the Star Wars universe, all of them rendered in the style of Japanese anime:
The series is getting good press, but it does raise a question: is Star Wars getting overexposed? The franchise took the briefest of breaks after the release of The Rise of Skywalker, but it’s come back with a vengeance on Disney+: we’ve already had two seasons of The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, and now Star Wars: Visions, and that’s just the beginning; coming down the pipeline we have an Obi-Wan Kenobi show, an Ahsoka Tano show, a Cassian Andor show, The Acolyte, and more.
That’s a lot of Star Wars, but Lucasfilm executive and Visions producer James Waugh isn’t worried. “From a broader kind of creative strategy perspective, Disney+ has changed the way we’re viewing a lot of what’s possible with Star Wars,” he told The Direct. “So you can get shows like The Mandalorian and Boba Fett because the platform allows for it…I would say that we weren’t ever concerned about the oversaturation potentiality with Visions in particular, and I think the reason was we were offering something that’s kind of a diversification of what the offering is… We weren’t concerned that this was going to impact Star Wars in aggregate, we thought this would be a breath of fresh air for people to explore Star Wars in an exciting new way.”
"Are we worried about oversaturation? I think we’re always very thoughtful and cautious about how do we keep Star Wars’ specialness in this landscape. We’re mindful, but this wasn’t one of those instances where we had our spidey-senses on a lot because we felt this was such a new offering."
Part of me wants to say that any strategy where you flood the market with movies and TV shows from the same franchise is doomed to fail, but that’s kind of a ridiculous thing to say to Disney, the purveyors of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The company seems to have cracked the code on releasing tons of content and having the fans come for more, often because it’s very good.
So I don’t plan to watch all of the Star Wars shows coming to Disney+, but some look interesting, which is enough for me. How about you? Are you ready for more Star Wars from now until the end of time or do you wish Disney and Lucasfilm would hold back a bit?
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h/t SyFy Wire