While we still have to wait for Nielsen to include Skeleton Crew in its streaming charts, newcomers Luminate (the company behind the U.S. Billboard charts) just updated their streaming charts yesterday with last week’s data, which means This means that Episode 3 of “Skeleton Crew” will be included in the data set.
It doesn’t look good for the latest installment of the Star Wars franchise. Click to see more!
Jude Law Finds Out About ‘Skeleton Crew’ Ratings
Just like last week, “Skeleton Crew” didn’t even crack the top 10 of Luminate’s original programming streaming charts. This is from week 2, with episode 3 added.
The 10th-ranked entry clocked in at just 288.9 million minutes. The Skeleton Crew can’t even defeat it.
This is especially bad because Acolyte, the lowest-rated live-action Star Wars series to date, clocked in at 380.5 million minutes on the Luminate streaming charts in its second week, a similar overall runtime, and a similar runtime in its second week. Ranked sixth in the overall program. “Skeleton Crew” is at least nearly 100 million minutes shorter than that. Of course, it all started going downhill for The Following pretty quickly, but Skeleton Crew didn’t improve as much as The Following in its second week, which is a great disservice to the show and Lucasfilm That’s really bad news.
Earlier this week, Forbes announced the show’s budget, which was $136 million. It’s “cheaper” than The Following, but it’s actually more expensive than The Mandalorian, and more expensive than Obi-Wan Kenobi. While you can at least see the budget this time around, one question has to be asked: a show with limited appeal (did Lucasfilm really think a Star Wars series starring children would be a huge success, considering watching this Demographics of fans of the show) show? In return for all this investment, viewership for the live-action Star Wars series on Disney+ must be at an all-time low. There is no longer a return on investment in anything Lucasfilm does.
This is even more tragic considering the show was generally well-received by audiences. Most people found it entertaining and entertaining, with many considering it the best show since Andor and The Mandalorian seasons one and two. It doesn’t seem to have affected the ratings either. Of course, word of mouth may eventually catch on, and Skeleton Crew’s ratings may improve in the coming weeks. Of course, we’ll have to wait for Nielsen and their charts as well, but as far as The Acolyte is concerned, Luminate and Nielsen are very much in agreement, and the numbers are very close.
If Nielsen confirms Luminate’s numbers, it will be catastrophic for Lucasfilm, and their utterly rotten 2024 will end in truly depressing fashion.
Also related to this is the fact that the Indiana Jones video game “The Great Circle” appears to be another failure of Lucasfilm-licensed games. While reviews of the game have been mostly positive, the number of players on Steam is surprisingly low considering it’s a AAA game. There are around 11,000 players this weekend, even the first full weekend since full launch (the game is in Early Access).
Lucasfilm is already a one-trick pony. After ruining Willow and turning the Indiana Jones movies into one of the biggest box office flops of all time, they only have Star Wars left. This currently appears to be on an unstoppable downward trajectory. The merchandise is no longer selling well enough that Hasbro, Lucasfilm/Disney’s largest partner in the toy industry, singled out Star Wars on its last earnings call to tell everyone how it was driving sales for its partner brands The main reason for poor performance. These shows with ballooning budgets failed on Disney+. Andorra and The Vision season 3s in 2025 will be hard-pressed to reverse that trend. So now everything seems to hinge on The Mandalorian movie. Can it save Star Wars from the abyss like the unexpected hit of Baby Yoda’s first season in 2019? Or will it dig the grave of Lucasfilm and Star Wars?
When even something that is universally accepted by almost everyone no longer makes an impact on the charts…the question is what else can Lucasfilm do. At this point, I think the only course of action is to remove Kathleen Kennedy as early as possible and put someone who is most liked and trusted by fans in her place.
Maybe you can also blame Skeleton Crew’s marketing. Considering Star Wars’ history with child characters, a show about children in space was always going to be a hard sell to the mostly adult fan base. It’s also an odd choice to put so much emphasis on the likes of The Goonies in marketing, when in reality Skeleton Crew draws more from classics with strong pirate themes like Treasure Island. But here’s the thing: While George Lucas did borrow from various shows or movies in his Star Wars saga, it never seemed like a well-thought-out move. Maybe people feel that Skeleton Crew is just that: a ploy, pure content, trying to lure people in with nostalgia.
Whatever the reason, the fact is that Skeletor appears to be a ratings disaster for Lucasfilm and will likely end up being the least-watched Marvel and Star Wars series on Disney+ (ignoring Echo here, It was thrown onto Disney+ in one fell swoop and has literally become the least-watched Marvel and Star Wars movie series on Disney+).
But what really worries Disney is that the second-largest streaming service in the U.S. and globally by subscriber count is severely underrepresented on the streaming charts. Luminate has no licensed content rankings (so no Bluey, but that’s not even a Disney IP), just original shows and movies, but Disney+ has exactly a “0” entry here, with no Disney shows, movies making the rankings, but again. There is no demand for any of Disney’s original content.
And struggling upstart Paramount+, which analysts only suggested earlier this year that Paramount was winding down its streaming business, has far fewer subscribers but four entries in the original programming charts, They are #1, #4, #6 and #1 respectively. The series starring Billy Bob Thornton and Ali Larter is Paramount’s No. 1 streaming show. So this isn’t even some flashy superhero or sci-fi show. Bob Iger should seriously reconsider the overall content strategy Disney is pursuing. Considering the number of subscribers, the lack of Disney+ content on the charts is shocking.
When even a staple franchise like Star Wars can’t quite crack the charts right now – despite mostly positive views from the people who are still watching it all – all alarm bells should be ringing. Lucasfilm cannot continue like this. Maybe the Acolytes did more damage to Star Wars than some people think. Leslie Headland attempts to single-handedly wipe out the Jedi, deconstructing Star Wars and making everything evil. Maybe she succeeded, just not the way she or Katherine Kennedy wanted.
Before anyone says anything: with the budget of Star Wars and other Disney-produced properties, anything other than a top ten spot on the charts would be a disaster. You wouldn’t spend that much money on something just to have it fall into the “run too” category. If these things cost maybe $40 or $50 million, then that’s not a problem. But considering Disney+ has so many subscribers, Lucasfilm and Disney’s ambitions can’t be just to be the top player. But that’s not the case.
Lucasfilm is also in dire need of a positive PR push. As mentioned before, the only thing I can think of is to quickly remove Kathleen Kennedy and replace her with someone the fans support. She has now experienced three major failures in a row. “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in 2023, “Acolyte” and “Skeleton Man” in 2024, Disney has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the past two years. Even licensed games failed. Outlaws and now Raiders of the Lost Ark were both commercial disappointments. Well, it did fail. The studio and its IP need to turn things around. soon.
Luminate streaming chart
