Nolte: Disney’s Next ‘Star Wars’ Movie Shaping Up to Be Most Expensive Ever

Even before the mammoth post-production and promotion costs are added in, the Disney Grooming Syndicate’s newest Star Wars movie is already shaping up to be the most expensive ever, which means it could be the biggest box office bomb ever.

We can only hope.

Starfighter is scheduled to hit theaters next week, and its production costs to date are a whopping $226.5 million. Post-production costs (visual effects, promotion, etc.) could easily drive the budget to $500 million.

If you think that sounds crazy, all-in, The Rise of Skywalker cost nearly $600 million.

Forbes:

Disney has revealed that its upcoming sci-fi film Star Wars: Starfighter cost $226.5 million to make by the time filming was finished, beating the sum spent during the same period on Star Wars: The Force Awakens which until recently was the most expensive movie ever made. … As this report revealed, Disney’s estimated profits on the box office of its Star Wars films plummeted ten fold from around $500 million for 2015’s The Force Awakens, the first of its sequels, to less than $50 million for The Rise of Skywalker in 2019.

Starfighter stars Ryan Gosling and takes place five years after the tediously boring events in The Rise of Skywalker. Gosling’s character exists in a galaxy changed by those events, where — oops, I almost forgot that I don’t care and neither do any of you.

Judging by the box office receipts for the most recent Star Wars movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu, it looks like everyone stopped caring right around the time Luke Skywalker was revealed as a man who drinks blue breast milk and is willing to kill a child. For the record, The Mandalorian and Grogu flamed out with a $347 million global haul. A generous estimate is that Disney lost anywhere from $70 million to $120 million.

Only Disney could lose money on a freaken Star Wars movie.

Tee hee.

The Last Starfighter does have one thing going for it, and that’s Ryan Gosling. But is that enough to drive a standalone Star Wars movie to the $1 billion it will likely require just to break even?

Disney is so stupid.

They killed off Han Solo, they killed off Luke Skywalker, and Carrie Fisher is dead. Those characters — more specifically, those played by the actors who originated them — are the whole ballgame.

It’s pretty difficult to see a Star Wars movie with no one from the original cast delivering a movie to $1 billion, and no, C3PO and R2D2 don’t count.