A new rumor claims that Disney and Lucasfilm believe that their Super Bowl ad for The Mandalorian and Grogu was a dud.
This rumor comes from Brent Lang and Ethan Shanfeld at Variety as part of a lengthy feature about the challenges that incoming Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro and President and Chief Creative Officer Dana Walden face.
One of those challenges is a reliance on older franchises like Marvel and Star Wars. The duo claim, “Overall, the company needs to develop new franchises to maintain the flywheel effect that feeds into streaming and the theme parks.”
They go on to cite TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz who asserted that “Marvel is definitely in a rut” and “They haven’t had a Star Wars movie in more than six years.”
That will change this year when Lucasfilm and Disney release Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian and Grogu film, which was recently featured during the Super Bowl with Din Djarin and Grogu riding a sled being pulled by Tauntauns on what appears to be the planet Hoth in an homage to Budweiser ads featuring the iconic Clydesdales.
Lang and Shanfeld claim that the ad did not go over well, “There are concerns that an unconventional 36-second Super Bowl spot for The Mandalorian & Grogu … failed to generate the kind of excitement the marketing team was hoping to spark.”
In fact, they claim “the film itself is something of a question mark, given that it’s based on a streaming series and, consequently, may not seem like a big-screen proposition for any but the most die-hard Baby Yoda lovers.”
That might be an understatement given the streaming series saw significant declines in viewership in its third and most recent season on Disney+. Nielsen reported yearly viewership for the show in 2023 hit 12.3 billion minutes viewed.
That’s a decline of over 2.2 billion minutes from the show’s second season. In 2020, when the show’s second season debuted, the series grossed 14.519 billion minutes viewed.
The total number of IMDb reviews also significantly declined in season 3. In eight episodes, the second season received over 263,000 reviews. Season 3 only received over 156,000. That’s a decline of 40%.
Additionally, the Super Bowl spot was ranked as the worst movie spot by BruinLife. Tom’s Guide also included the ad on its worst list.
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