‘The Acolyte’ Budget Compared to ‘Dune’ 1 & 2 Shows How Badly Disney Wasted Money On It

‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ is the most recent installment in the Star Wars franchise. The show ran for 8 episodes and has been met with mostly negative reviews, in part due to allegedly pushing the woke narrative and in part due to the low quality of the show.

Pretty much all aspects of the show were criticized, story, writing, pacing, acting, costumes, and runtime with lightsaber combat being its only saving grace. Those few minutes of action however were not enough to capture the attention of fans, and after losing viewers week after week, the show was cancelled a few days ago.

This wasn’t all that unexpected however, a couple of weeks ago we summarized exactly why the show won’t get a second season. The studio is able to “waste” some money on a show with low viewership as long as it gets them good reviews, ‘The Acolyte’ only wasted money however, and it wasted a lot of it since it’s one of the most expensive Star Wars shows ever made.

You can’t really tell, but ‘The Acolyte’ had a $180 Million budget for 8 episodes that approximately last around 45 minutes. This is quite the amount of money. There are some impressive action sequences included in the show so far and impressive VFX work, but is it worth $180 million?

Forbes reported that ‘The Acolyte’ spent $49 million on pre-production, leaving $130 million for principal photography, reshoots, and post-production. The $180 million budget for eight episodes is substantial but not the highest for a Star Wars series; ‘Andor’ holds that record with a $250 million budget for twelve episodes. Both series benefited from UK tax breaks, which allowed for larger budgets.

Compared to Disney+ Star Wars series produced in California like ‘The Mandalorian,’ ‘The Book of Boba Fett,’ ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi,’ and ‘Ahsoka,’ ‘The Acolyte’ and ‘Andor’ received significantly higher budgets. The upcoming series ‘Skeleton Crew,’ set to follow ‘The Acolyte,’ has a reported budget of $136 million, also benefiting from California tax credits.

The prequel films ‘The Phantom Menace,’ ‘Attack of the Clones,’ and ‘Revenge of the Sith’ each had budgets around $115 million, but these figures still fall short of ‘The Acolyte’s’ budget for its eight 45-minute episodes.

Star Wars productions are ballooning in recent times, I guess you can say that for the whole of Hollywood, but one impressive masterpiece released in recent times managed to have a smaller budget and still bring in impressive shots and a lot of box office money.

We’re talking about Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune’ franchise. The first installment had a reported budget of $165 million, and the movie was visually stunning with plenty of exotic locations and elaborate costumes on set. The movie earned $ 407 million. It was cheaper than ‘The Acolyte.’

‘Dune: Part Two’ had a slightly higher budget of $190 million, it beats ‘The Acolyte’ by 10 million but in the movie’s defense it also earned quite a lot more than the first installment scoring $711.8 million worldwide. Once again, the movie turned out to be a work of art and you can totally see where the money went. The same can’t be said for the Star Wars show.

Lately, Disney as a whole has been having financial troubles, they are losing money on all of their flagship franchise (Marvel, Star Wars) and on their streaming service Disney+ which has accumulated billions in losses since it launched.

This is why a couple of months ago Iger announced that the company will be moving forward with reduced creative output, and judging by the state of upcoming Star Wars projects, it shows.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!

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