Novelist Isaac Young recently explained how Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company’s The Acolyte was a “smashing success” despite it being cancelled after a single season due to low viewership.
Earlier this month, Disney Entertainment Co-Chairman Alan Bergman confirmed the reason that Leslye Headland’s The Acolyte was canceled after its first season was due to low viewership.
Speaking with Vulture’s Josef Adalian, Bergman was asked, “The Acolyte had many strong reviews and did well in the ratings its first week out, but you ultimately opted against a second season. Why didn’t you move forward?”
He replied, “So as it relates to Acolyte, we were happy with our performance, but it wasn’t where we needed it to be given the cost structure of that title, quite frankly, to go and make a season two. So that’s the reason why we didn’t do that.”
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Despite the show getting scrapped due to low viewership, novelist Isaac Young, the author of The Domes of Calrathia, explains how the show was a “smashing success.”
He wrote on X, “Disney spent around 200 million on The Acolyte. That money didn’t vanish into thin air. It went into the pockets of their activists—their people.”
“The Acolyte was a smashing success,” he declared. “It was a massive wealth transfer to their clients while inciting mainstream outrage.”
In a subsequent post, he continued, “Why does Hollywood seem so hell-bent on investing in financial failure after financial failure? Well, the point is to give money to their people. Making a profit is a happy accident.”
“Conservatives will point out this is insane and makes zero business sense. Well, too bad,” he wrote.
“Understand that these are not people who plan to be carefully shepherding these institutions for decades to come,” he continued. “They’ve been strip mining every IP and franchise for the past twenty years, making vanity projects while robbing these institutions for everything they’re worth.”
“And when the whole thing finally does crumble, these people are going to be largely fine because they’ve amassed enough personal net worth to outpace the collapsing economy,” he noted. “They won’t have to worry about inflation or paying for a house or a car or any of it.”
To highlight this point he noted that Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy’s net worth is $300 million, “Is Kathleen Kennedy going to worry about the collapse of Lucasfilm? No, she’s going to be fine. Once it’s all said and done, she might walk out of this halfway to being a billionaire.”
However, he does note, “The good news is that we’re at the point where the last train is leaving is the station, and the next generation of grifters are struggling to get on. There’s not enough in the system to bankroll another fifty years of this.”
What do you make of Young’s analysis regarding The Acolyte and how the Hollywood elite operate?
If you are looking for dark fantasy science fiction/fantasy novel that is set in the dying earth genre and marries rich worldbuilding with sword and planet style action back The Domes of Calrathia on IndieGoGo.
The ladies at Disney are smashing glass floors, not ceilings.
He's right, of course. All those youtubers celebrating the inevitable demise of Kennedy's career and Headland's reputation are missing the forest for the trees; those "ladies" and their friends have no pride to sting and no skin in the game, fandom-wise. They don't give a sh*t about canon consistency or legacy for characters they didn't create and their children don't care about.
I wish I could agree that the last train is leaving the station. I'd like that to be true. We'll see.