Author Archives: Thomas
Three brand new Black Series figures were revealed by the Hasbro team today!
- Night Trooper (Ahsoka)
- Ezra Bridger (Ahsoka)
- SM-33 (Skeleton Crew)
SM-33 will be a deluxe figure!
All figures will be available for preorder on the 26th at 1 pm ET! The Night Trooper and Ezra will come this summer, SM-33 will be available in fall!
Article updated with photos and some additional info! Click through for more!
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Chris Cocks is currently at New York Toy fair and there he was interviewed by Yahoo Finance about the new tariffs imposed by the US administration, targeting, among other countries, also China, which is still the #1 manufacturer of toys worldwide. And while efforts are on the way to move away from China, it will take a long time to fully replace China and especially all the Star Wars action figures are basically still made there, so there is no escaping tariffs for now. And this means: price increases are looming on the horizon. Read more after the jump!
Chris Cocks talks about the impact of tariffs on toy prices
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There were a few Black Series reveals today! Let’s dive right in!
- Moff Gideon in Dark Trooper Armor
- Imperial Praetorian Guard
- Cassian Andor in Imperial test pilot outfit from Andor season 2
- Director Krennic with photoreal head
And then several repacked figures will come in the 20th anniversary Revenge of the Sith line!
- Count Dooku
- Kit Fisto
- R2-D2
All the ROTS figures are Walmart exclusives! And will become available at the Walmart March Collector Event, more news about that to follow.
The regular figures will be available for pre-order on March 5th at 1 pm ET and will be available later this year in summer!
One roleplay item was also revealed!
- 501st Clone Trooper helmet
Updated with photos! Click through for more!
A first Andor season 2 figure was revealed!
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After yesterday’s news there is already rampant speculation about who will succeed Kathleen Kennedy at Lucasfilm. The Hollywood Reporter even has an entire article about it and they have some insightful things to say! Click through for more!
UPDATE: Industry insider Jeff Sneider shared some additional info about Kennedy’s retirement and who may replace her.
Those guys?
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Yes, I know, you may be skeptical. But very reputable Hollywood trade newsletter Puck News (their newsletter and website have a paywall) broke the story earlier tonight, according to three of their sources Kathleen Kennedy will step down as Lucasfilm president and retire by the end of 2025. Major Hollywood trade magazines like The Hollywood Reporter are running the story as well, this time it’s apparently for real! Click through to read it all!!!
Symbol photo
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Luminate, a Nielsen competitor who have been releasing streaming charts for some time now, released their year end streaming market analysis a while ago and their report – among other things – offers a lot of insight into how Star Wars is doing on Disney+. And in more general terms how Disney+ is doing, at least when it comes to original streaming content.
And for the first time ever we get numbers in this report for shows like Skeleton Crew and even The Bad Batch!
As you probably know Skeleton Crew never made either the Luminate or the Nielsen Streaming Charts. Nielsen have finally released their charts for the week in which the Skeleton Crew series finale was released – and it did not make the top 10 once again, making it the very first Star Wars live action show on Disney+ never to crack the top 10 original series charts.
But how bad was it really? Luminate’s report does include numbers for the first five episodes of Skeleton Crew (all the 2024 episodes) plus numbers for The Bad Batch which released earlier in 2024. And what do you think the #1 original show on Disney+ was in 2024? And how does it compare with the competition?
Star Wars in 2024
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Earlier today Hasbro released their numbers for Q4 2024 and also for the full year. As expected Chris Cocks is full of praise for himself and Hasbro and sees the company on the right path. He wants to transform Hasbro into more of a games company, not really toys anymore, they also want to go more into (digital) gaming, no surprise, with how successful the licensed D&D title Baldur’s Gate 3 was and how much money on the phone Monopoly Go! is making for them. And Cocks even announced a new strategy “playing to win!”. One aspect of this new strategy is to appeal to kids ages 13+, of course Hasbro feels the effects of the smartphone and video gaming, and the cut off age for certain toys is getting ever lower. This is where games and the entire Wizards of the Coast branch are supposed to succeed. And yes, for the full year Wizards grew again, while consumer products (aka “toys”) revenue greatly declined by 12% for the full year.
Revenue overall declined by 17% for the full year, much of that can be attributed to the sale of eOne (Hasbro got rid of their entertainment branch), but even without that revenue still declined 7%. Total earnings for 2024 were $4.1 billion, vs $5 billion in 2023. But profitability is up, operating margins are pretty good and Hasbro owned inventory (aka unsold stuff languishing in a warehouse) is also greatly reduced.
What do I hear you say? Star Wars? What about Star Wars? Click through to find out…
UPDATE: now with earnings call transcript and a few insightful words about Star Wars from Hasbro (nothing positive)
Getting smaller year after year…
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Earlier today Disney Parks revealed on their social media accounts that a rather famous Star Wars character will finally come to Galaxy’s Edge.
And it’s none other than Luke Skywalker.
So much for “Galaxy’s Edge should be a living thing, not a Star Wars museum about the past, and Rey and Kylo will attract all the fans”.
I suppose several Disney execs still rue the day they decided not to recreate Tatooine for their Star Wars themed shopping mall.
In other news: the now defunct Star Wars Hotel will be converted into office space.
Source: Disney Parks on X
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Third time’s the charm? The Rey Palpatine movie, tentatively titled “New Jedi Order”, has found yet another new writer. This after Damon Lindelof and his writing partner were let go over creative differences, then Steven Knight was tasked to come up with something, yet according to reports Lucasfilm didn’t like any of his treatments, so he focused on other things more worth his time and moved on… but Kathy won’t give up that easily, Lucasfilm has now hired yet another screenwriter as per The Hollywood Reporter, so this is pretty official!
And the new vict… I mean writer is George Nolfi! If you wonder “who?”. Nolfi has written seven movies in total so far. Among them several pretty average and forgettable ones. His best known works are the very average (some would say bad) “Timeline” (the movie based on a Michael Crichton book), then there’s Ocean’s 12, and he also wrote two pretty good Matt Damon movies, The Bourne Ultimatum and The Adjustment Bureau, the latter is like Timeline the only somewhat more fantastical movie where mysterious guardians of the timeline try to prevent a romance between Damon and co-star Emily Blunt. But Nolfi has never really worked on an all out scifi/fantasy movie before.
Nolfi is also a director, his most notable work as a director is The Adjustment Bureau.
So he has experience, he knows how to direct and to write (and produce) movies. Nolfi certainly has the qualification and at least the two Matt Damon movies are even pretty enjoyable. But let’s see where this is going. I am saying it once more: if Disney really let Kennedy make her Rey movie, even more so with a non-director like Obaid-Chinoy at the helm, they are more foolish than I already think they are.
Also, since Nolfi has worked a lot with Matt Damon previously… could this mean he’s joining Star Wars as well? Now we only need Ben Affleck!
Post your humorous thoughts in the comments!
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It’s been a while since I talked about rumors, well, this time it’s more “leaks” than “rumors”, one of the sources is even The Hollywood Reporter. So no YouTube shenanigans really this time, more like credible leaks about upcoming things! Of course this article will be spoilerific to the max, so if you are allergic to spoilers please avoid! Click through for all the rumours and leaks!
You are about the enter the Star Wars Rumor Zone!
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Skeleton Crew just ended on Disney+ so it makes perfect sense for Hasbro to make a livestream all about the Ahsoka series! That’s next level marketing!
Two (one really) new Black Series figures were revealed today, and nothing more, no pipeline reveals either.
- Anakin Skywalker from the World Between Worlds Flashback
- Captain Rex (using the new clone body) from the same flashback scene
Preorders begin on January 23rd at 1 pm ET, they say availability is “spring 2025”! Happy hunting! Will you get any of those? Since I have all the Captain Rex I need I will only get Anakin. He looks pretty good. And that’s all folks!
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The year is still young and we are treated to the first Hasbro Star Wars fanstream already! The event starts at 11 AM Eastern. What are your predictions?
I will update this post with a link to the video once it is available (usually a few minutes before the stream begins), so refresh the page a few minutes before the event to see the link to the video or to watch the embedded stream after the jump! Or just head over at the Hasbro Pulse YouTube channel for today’s event and watch it all there!
The stream is now live, the event will kick off soon! Watch the stream here or click the YouTube link above!
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I’ll make this quick, since I have discussed this in detail previously. But the Skeleton Crew series finale failed to make the Luminate streaming charts which are already out for the past 7 days, so the final episode is already included. The #10 entry on the Luminate charts has 377.8 million minutes.
Meanwhile on the Nielsen charts episode 4 also failed to leave an impression, the show is still absent from those charts as well, the #10 original series here has 326 million minutes.
This means Skeleton Crew is with little doubt the least watched Star Wars live action show on Disney+ ever. With probably even less viewers than for Ms Marvel.
Anyone who still clings to the hope that this may somehow, maybe get an order for a second season will be sorely disappointed. It’s moot to discuss the reasons for this failure. It’s probably a combination of factors: kids as main characters which may not be something most adult Star Wars fans want, Star Wars Goonies meets Treasure Island may be too far removed from Star Wars as fans know and like it, and maybe The Acolyte has left nothing but scorched earth.
The only people to blame here are the ones making all the decisions at Lucasfilm and Disney. Absolutely not to blame however are the showruners Christopher Ford and Jon Watts and all the actors starring in Skeleton Crew, they delivered. The only question Watts and Ford may have to answer is if their pitch really was a good fit for Star Wars, however that is Kathleen Kennedy’s job to decide, not theirs, they did a really good job. So if you like Pirates of the Star Wars Galaxy as a concept the show was a fun ride with the best writing for any Disney+ Star Wars show outside of Andor and early Mandalorian seasons.
Why there is still no report of Kathleen Kennedy leaving Lucasfilm after her third colossal failure in a row (Indy 5, The Acolyte, now Skeleton Crew) and cratering merchandise and video game sales keeps on boggling the mind. Next victim of her touch of death could as well be The Mandalorian & Grogu movie, the leaks for that movie sound horrible. But by then it may be far too late to replace her. It’s difficult to see how Star Wars could make a comeback any time soon when there’s nothing but craters, smoking ruins and scorched earth.
Let’s hope for the best.
Defeat
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Skeleton Crew released its series finale on Tuesday. Sure, in theory this could get a season 2, but let’s be real, audience numbers make that almost impossible.
Which is a bit sad really, because people missed out on a genuinely good-hearted, fun and entertaining show that tried to give people a really good time. And the finale “The Real Good Guys” is no exception, it’s a fun ride with more action than any of the other episodes. All important questions and mysteries are answered too, but it also leaves a few things open for future stories. But unlike other shows Skeleton Crew feels more or less complete, yes, with potential for more, but this particular chapter of the story had a proper beginning, middle and end. It was a fun journey!
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I still owe you all my spoiler review for episode 7 of Skeleton Crew! Sorry for the somewhat late post, but better late than never as the saying goes…
“We’re Gonna Be In So Much Trouble” is the endgame for Skeleton Crew. All the different factions arrive on or in orbit of At Attin, we learn a bit about At Attin and its secret is mostly solved by now, with one important omission, who the supervisor is (we do hear him for the first time).
It was a fun ride once again, very enjoyable, but maybe, when you think about it all, not really all that star-wars-y. In fact, you could easily remove the few Star Wars references from Skeleton Crew and the series would still mostly be the same… a quasi retelling of Treasure Island and Goonies.
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This is just an update really, because I discussed the streaming charts for Skeleton Crew in detail only earlier this week. But Nielsen and Luminate have both released new charts earlier today. Nielsen for week 2 of Skeleton Crew and Luminate for week 6! So Luminate has data for episode 7 (review will follow probably tomorrow, stay tuned).
And what do the charts tell us?
Skeleton Crew made neither of the charts. The #10 entry on the Nielsen charts has 306 million minutes, the #10 entry on the Luminate charts 288.7. It’s safe to assume even the final episode next week will not make the charts, which means Skeleton Crew will be the first Star Wars live action series ever not to make it into the top 10 original shows streaming charts once. Even Marvel hasn’t managed that yet, Echo was in the top 10 for one week (because all episodes were released at once, if not, this show would not have made the top 10 either).
With that it’s now evident that Skeleton Crew is a colossal and pretty expensive ratings flop for Disney. Even though the show is generally well received. All possible alarm bells should ring over at Lucasfilm and Disney. And Andor will certainly not take the world by storm either, despite very enthusiastic and overwhelmingly positive reviews for season 1.
My advice to them… fall back upon what is known to work. Maybe it’s time to make a deepfake Luke series. If Disney even still wants to make more Star Wars for Disney+ after a string of super expensive flops. Ahsoka season 2 in 2026 will certainly not be it.
The Nielsen Streaming Charts
The Luminate Streaming Charts
The kids learn about the ratings for their show
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The Hollywood Reporter broke the news yesterday: contrary to what some fans theorized, Baylan Skoll will not die off-screen or mysteriously disappear in Ahsoka season 2. Late actor Ray Stevenson will be replaced by Rory McCann, who, among other things, appeared in Game of Thrones before.
Baylan was too essential of a character to write him out of Ahsoka season 2, with various plot threads unresolved, so a recast was the only sensible option.
Ahsoka season 2 is currently scheduled to release sometime in 2026.
What are your thoughts on this?
The character will live on
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As you may know I look at how each and every Disney+ Star Wars series performs on the streaming charts. Earlier in 2024 I also added Luminate to the picture and looked at their charts. And I already talked about the Luminate charts for Skeleton Crew previously, because their charts are released in a much more timely fashion. Nielsen has a four week delay, Luminate usually posts their charts 24 hours or so after the data gathering period has ended for the week (however, Luminate have not updated their charts since mid December).
So what do the Nielsen streaming charts say? Did Skeleton Crew perform any better here after never making the top 10 Luminate streaming charts? Click through for the details!
No love for Neel
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Sorry for the delay but to release episodes for a tv/streaming show over Christmas and even New Year’s Eve is an odd choice maybe, when people are busy doing other things. Anyway, I did of course watch the latest Skeleton Crew episode titled “Zero Friends Again” in the meantime and it was another very solid and fun entry!
We are nearing the endgame of season 1 (which will probably also be the only season this show will ever get based on audience numbers and the pretty high budget) so there’s lots to talk about!
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2024 is almost behind us now! The perfect time to talk about your personal Star Wars action figure of the year 2024! Please pick only a figure that was actually released in 2024, so if you bought a rocket firing Boba Fett prototype, good for you, but that figure would not be eligible. It doesn’t need to be a Hasbro figure, anything goes, Hot Toys, Funko, SH Figuarts, as long as it’s Star Wars and it was released in 2024! Also, no vehicles or playsets please, even if the Ghost has been shipped, let’s make this about figures only!
Post your personal pick for Star Wars action figure of the year in the comments! I will tell you about my pick after the jump!
And the award goes to….
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We got a new episode of Skeleton Crew earlier this week, because of the Christmas holidays my review follows somewhat later than usual, but I did watch the latest episode over the holidays!
And it was the most and best fun I had with Star Wars in ages. “You Have A Lot To Learn About Pirates” was a near perfect lighthearted romp and adventure for the whole family, kids and adults alike can love this.
So even if you have turned into the Star Wars Grinch… maybe give Skeleton Crew a chance and see how your heart will grow a size or too… it may rekindle a spark inside of you!
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Now this has nothing to do with Star Wars – or at least only very, very remotely. But since Kathleen Kennedy still thinks she can make a Rey Palpatine movie about some New Jedi Order with mega blockbuster superstar Daisy Ridley many people will certainly watch with great interest how Daisy Ridley’s upcoming action movie will do – in which she plays Girlboss McClane in a movie that is a blatant Die Hard ripoff. And no, this is no joke! Someone actually made a movie with Daisy as a female John McClane who has to stop a terrorist attack in a skyscraper and then gave it a different title hoping a few people at least may not notice the copy/paste job. Click through for more!
Clean Harder!
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I will make this very quick. Luminate updated their charts with data from the last seven days earlier today (their cutoff date is always on Thursday at 11:59 pm). Which means Skeleton Crew episode 4 was added. And the show did not make the charts yet again.
Skeleton Crew could be the first Star Wars series never to make the Luminate streaming charts (however, since Luminate is still pretty new only Acolyte was ever on the Luminate charts). We will have to wait for Nielsen and what they are saying, but if Nielsen shows the same trend (and the show would never be on the Nielsen top 10 streaming charts) then Skeleton Crew will become the least watched Star Wars live action series ever and the first to never once break into the top 10 most watched original shows. Even though it is currently the #1 show on Disney+.
The #10 entry on the Luminate charts has 307.3 million minutes. Around this time The Acolyte had a very bad 262 million minutes on the Luminate charts. So in theory, Skeleton Crew could have more than The Acolyte at this point of course, as long as it’s less than 307.3 million minutes. But since Skeleton Crew underperformed The Acolyte in the previous two weeks that seems unlikely.
Lucasfilm is in dire need of some deep soul searching and honest in-depth analysis of the state of Star Wars in 2024 after Kathleen Kennedy burned one too many bridges. It may very well be that The Acolyte finally broke the camel’s back. Also, maybe don’t try to be Stranger Things in space again, even if it’s fun. Why not make something that is, well, Star Wars? What it is known for? Well executed of course. And that’s the crux with almost all of the Disney+ Star Wars series.
Jude Law surrenders
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Unfortunately the latest Skeleton Crew episode feels like a first major misstep for the show. The beginning is actually pretty interesting and sets up something potentially intriguing…. the ending is also pretty interesting, as in, it advances the plot… but the 20 minutes between those two segments are just an utterly bizarre throwaway side quest that literally makes no sense. At all. Like… what were they thinking when they wrote that, I wonder!
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While we still have to wait a while for Nielsen to include Skeleton Crew on their streaming charts newcomer Luminate (the company behind the US billboard charts) have updated their streaming charts with data from last week only yesterday, which means episode 3 of Skeleton Crew is included in the dataset.
And it does not look good for the latest Star Wars series. Click through for more!
Jude Law learns about the viewership numbers for Skeleton Crew
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