Lucasfilm’s Franchise Fallout: Disney’s $600 Million Mistake Alienated Male Fans

Disney has managed to do what once seemed impossible: take billion‑dollar male‑driven franchises like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Marvel and run them straight into the ground chasing audiences that never existed. The proof is The Rise of Skywalker. According to Forbes, it cost nearly $594 million to make and market, yet it still bled money. That’s supposed to be the crown jewel of modern Hollywood, and it couldn’t even pay for itself. Disney took one of the most bankable brands in movie history and turned it into another DEI vanity project that nobody wanted.

It’s not complicated. The people who built these franchises were men who grew up loving them. They were the ticket buyers, the collectors, the fans keeping the flame alive long before Disney ever showed up. Then the company decided those fans were the problem. Instead of making movies for them, Disney chased after an imaginary new audience of girls who had no interest in Star Wars or Indiana Jones in the first place. They got what they wanted: applause from the Hollywood Twitterati – and crickets at the box office.

Inside Lucasfilm, the ideological split says it all. Kathleen Kennedy keeps trying to reinvent Star Wars into something “new” and “empowered,” which in practice means stories nobody connects with. Dave Filoni, the one creative who still gets the old spirit of the franchise, has kept fan hopes alive with The Mandalorian. He’s one of the few people left who respects what Star Wars was before Disney decided to sterilize it. But even Filoni has to fight uphill against leadership that doesn’t seem to like its own audience.

Bob Iger recently admitted that Disney needs “original ideas” again, which is another way of saying their existing brands are dead weight. That’s what happens when you strip everything adventurous and masculine from your biggest titles. It’s not just Star Wars either — Marvel is wobbling, Indiana Jones is finished, and the last few superhero bombs prove audiences have stopped showing up for moral lectures disguised as entertainment.

Next up is The Mandalorian and Grogu. It’s been seven years since the last Star Wars film hit theaters. This new one might be the final test of whether Disney learned anything. If it looks and feels like more of the same corporate rebooting — with heroes replaced by message-driven placeholders — it’s over. But if Filoni can remind audiences why this universe mattered in the first place, there might be a pulse left. Disney used to sell wonder. Now it sells scolding. Until that changes, the Force won’t be saving anyone.

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