1. Saw the new 3.75" Galactica figures and viper. Pricy, but it's an obscure IP, so maybe its rarity drives up the price.

Are licenses negotiable in terms of their effect on a toy's final price?
--Derek

It depends! Exciting answer, isn't it? It's very much an apples and oranges scenario. Some items cost what they cost, while others are dealing with making a product for the masses with consistent pricing. The quantity is as important as the license. As someone once said to me, "I can make you a deal and sell you one unit of an action figure. It's going to be a very expensive action figure."

Everything's negotiable. You have to draw up contracts and hire lawyers, so all parties have to ask if making a deal is even worth the effort. If I owned an indie movie that wasn't making me any money, you can bet I'd be willing to work with someone that wants to make a product and pay me. If I had entirely too much business and was turning people away, I might ask for more money to weed out the small fry. Each studio might have a different perspective here, and Disney is reportedly harder to sign with because, well, they're Disney. They own most of the best brands right now, so they can say no and they're going to do just fine.

I don't know what's a secret or what's not, but here are some general things that might help put the whole business in perspective. Most licensees (the toy company) have to pay a big up-front guarantee to the licensor (the studio) even if they never bring a product to market. If I went to a big studio and said "I want to make Ed Wood figures" they would probably ask me for a large check. That money usually, but not always, serves as a credit toward future royalty payments - a cut of every item sold. If you have to spread that guarantee over 1,000,000 figures and toys, it's no big deal. If you have to spread it over 10,000 figures, that might hurt.

A studio may be willing to waive the guarantee, but rarely/never the royalties, in special circumstances. Some studios charge a higher royalty rate because they've got something really good and there's a competitive marketplace. Some might just do it on a handshake given the right circumstances. I personally wouldn't call Battlestar Galactica "obscure IP," as it had a couple of big TV shows and probably requires some involvement from NBCUniversal's legal department just to draw up the contracts. I would assume the cost to make that license happen would be lower than Star Wars, but I am not involved with any of those companies' wheelings and/or dealings for these specific deals. So you have a fixed cost (the guarantee) and a percentage of all future sales (royalties) to consider. These are spread out over the length of the contract, so if you're selling millions of units the license fees may be negligible. It's not nothing - it will impact your bottom line - but if you're making enough money, who cares? You pay the studio, and everybody wins.

I had a lot more rambling, but I realized I wasn't addressing your question. You can make a cheap toy. It's possible. Mattel had $1.00-$1.25 Hot Wheels Landspeeders, Batmobiles, U.S.S.es Enterprise, and so on in its basic car assortments. It's possible! They're also probably making tens (or hundreds) of thousands of them, with fewer moving parts and very limited deco. These are some huge licenses from some massive studios, but they made it work because there are other business considerations and the studio is also going to get money from various figures, dolls, roleplay toys, and other goodies in the deal. If you want to know if a small company can make a $20 super-articulated figure from a licensed property, it's going to be difficult unless they can move a lot of units and negotiate the factory pricing down, too. The more you can sell, the cheaper it is to make the items.

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2. I loved your comment from [last] week's Q&A:
"I'm guaranteed to see this movie, but I can't exactly say I'm buzzing with anticipation because I also have 3 1/2 seasons of adventures I could watch right now if I wanted to."

Truthfully, I am scared that I am going to walk out of this movie, saying "Ehh....ok" LIke I did for "Rise of Skywalker" and never watch it again. It has been almost 7 years since that movie came out, I have re-watched "The Force Awakens", "Rogue One", "The Last Jedi" and "Solo" BUT never never "Rise of Skywalker" and I can say, I am ok with it. Mandalorian Season 1 was great and I hope they use that as a baseline but early reviews & box-office numbers don't seem promising.

If this movie JUST makes a profit, what are the odds that "Starfighter" is shelved? Or the 50th Anniversary of "Star Wars" (Not likely in my mind but hey....) With layoffs at Disney, streaming services combining and other external world factors, could Star Wars be heading to another "sunset" period like after Return of the Jedi?
--Jeremiah

Disney sure did let Star Wars take a theatrical nap after 2019, but I think that was more due to a tepid reaction to the movie and what felt like an unusual amount of perfectionism in picking the next one. I've actually lost track of how many movies, TV shows, and TV shows that may or may not be movies were announced to the public and never went anywhere. Now that struck me as super strange - but they finished shooting Starfighter last year, so you're probably going to see Starfighter. Will it be good? I have no idea - they got some really good people working on it, so I have no reason to say "no." Project Hail Mary has the same star, it's the #1 non-franchise movie of the year, and everybody wants to do a Ryan Gosling movie. Barring an unprecedented catastrophe in post-production, a Star Wars with Ryan Gosling in it is the kind of thing any studio would beg to have

While we have seen TV shows swept under the rug, I don't think Disney has done away with an entire Star Wars or Marvel movie that completed principle photography. (I can name a DreamWorks movie that was pretty far along, complete with prototypes for a toy line, though.) If (heaven forbid) The Mandalorian and Grogu doesn't make a lot of money, they're probably going to market the next one harder. Here in Arizona, marketing seems to be incredibly light compared to a lot of their other offerings. My hunch is the masses may not be aware it's even coming.

We as fans look at Star Wars as this special thing, but now it's just another item in Disney's portfolio. If a Star Wars movie underperforms, Disney will still make the next one - look at Marvel. Most of their movies are hits, and if one doesn't work it usually gets reshoots or a different marketing spin or something. There are some that flat-out never got filmed (Blade), but once the cameras start to roll you're probably going to see the movie. Solo replaced its directors, and we still got that movie on time and over budget.

As far as the franchise taking a nap, we already saw an example of what can happen. The TV shows picked up the slack, and we get so many episodes of shows that nobody can keep up. If we stop getting new Star Wars movies, we'll probably see more even more attempts at preschool cartoons to try and kickstart a future generation. But as Ewoks and Droids showed us in 1985, that doesn't always work.

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FIN

I missed out on Disney's R4 insta-selling online last week, so I'm on the market for one of those and some good news. At least I have reason to be very excited about 2027, and maybe some day R4 will show up somewhere at a price I won't balk at paying.

But what about today?

I feel like I've had the same reaction to a few Disney+ Star Wars shows - Maul - Shadow Lord is finally getting good. The first six episodes were mostly placing pieces on the table, and could probably have been truncated to 1 or 2 episodes with a short opening crawl or recap of some sort. Episodes 7 and 8 bring you action, some impressive animation, a few nice set pieces, and generally the kind of stuff you want in a Star Wars. Yes, even a brief, weird scene with some cool alien weirdos. I feel like it's a challenge of any streaming show to not pad their already brief episode count, but at least there were a couple of episodes so far where I had a big dumb grin on my face and had a good time. How will the next two (or twelve) go, nobody knows, but at least we're getting characters doing and feeling some interesting things. Most Star Wars cartoons don't get really good until about halfway through their original run - usually 1-3 years in (The Clone Wars enjoyed a couple of encores) they get weird and just do what they're going to do. Now that Maul is good, I assume it won't go much longer than two years.

An exception to the rule, The Bad Batch had two really good seasons and a third that felt like it meandered to save on the budget.

I should also probably talk a bit about Hasbro's new Star Wars Ultimate Grogu 1:1 Scale Premium Animatronic Limited Edition Life-Size Replica, which I believe is the most expensive non-crowdfunded item Hasbro have ever sold in stores or online. Previously, Transformers Masterpiece Edition imports held that title - but none of those topped $500. As someone who finds this to be a fun character, I'm curious to see if the appetite exists for this much similar-looking stuff of the same mascot character over and over and over. The movie might be able to sell a lot of it to a lot of new people, but you really can't count on them to show up until after the movie comes out and that's going to be in about three weeks. As long as the big box stores don't get scared and mark down stuff before the movie opens, this could be a great opportunity to engage the non-collector fan market. Sure, the collectors are bored, but there are a lot more not-collectors (and ex-collectors) to engage these days.

It's a neat idea, but the sheer quantity of product - especially with how little of it seems to be appealing to a wider audience than "make sure there's a Grogu for every demographic" - seems kind of off-putting. It's good they're trying to market it to kids, but I feel that built-in audience of collectors is probably going to feel a little alienated this time when the creatures and costumes of the film look like slam-dunk toy sales. But I just work here, what do I know?

--Adam Pawlus

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