1. [The Vintage Collection] Lando went UP in price?!? It's priced at 20 at Walmart for a 3.75" figure from 2021?!? How does it make sense?
--Derek

Believe it or not, it makes perfect sense... if you've ever worked for a store. Most pricing is done across the board when you're dealing with an assortment - and remember, even if the toys all look the same, it's that 5-digit SKU (or in Target's case, SKUs assigned to a DPCI) that can result in a change across every item that shipped in that assortment. If Hasbro gives you a new price list, you update those items accordingly. If a company raises the price for an assortment, all items in the assortment are increased to match because your reorders will be at the new higher prices. Lando Calrissian (TVC #205) was $13.99 in October 2021, because that was normal price. Because Hasbro hasn't discontinued his assortment - E7763 still shipped new guys recently (and I can't recall if more are coming in 2026 or if they're finally discontinuing that assortment for a new one.) This is red tape/computer stuff.if Walmart has a dozen Lando figures, and Hasbro is still making new E7763 Vintage figures, a) it won't reorder new ones, and b) it will increase the price of what it has on hand because it's still a "good" product. Someone at Walmart or Hasbro has to actually take notice of what's happening at stores on a granular level and go "oh, we need to flush Lando from the system so the stores can get new waves and actually start making us money with that shelf space again." Obviously, this hasn't happened.

How does this keep happening? Speaking as someone who has a job where you have to manage thousands of SKUs, it's easy to not notice things if they aren't being a squeaky wheel. If you're also managing dozens of other manufacturers, this one item might just escape the Eye of Sauron. You've got Barbie and LEGO and Hot Wheels and store brand stuff to manage too - if a 50-year-old space movie franchise has toys that don't sell, you don't ask why. You might just accept it, unless you're a fan who's curious enough to look into it. I would do (and have done) the same thing - My Little Pony has slowed a lot. Am I going to do a lot of work to ask why? Or will I just going to move on and focus on the next product that needs some attention and might sell more units?

Hopefully, someone at Walmart or Hasbro is reading this and will tell stores "hey, please mark down your Lando figures so we can ship you new stuff." And then we all have to cross our fingers they don't get 501st Clones and unsold Mandalorian Super Commando figures which just happen to be warming the pegs at Walmart stores near me that don't currently have a lot of Lando.

Until Hasbro starts shipping classic original trilogy/new movie stuff people want, the pegs shall remain warmed. And the only way around that might be to give the line a rest that allows old stock to be purged.

Ad: Get In-Stock Star Wars and other Rerun Pre-Orders at Entertainment Earth! Get Free USA Shipping on Orders $79+

 

2. As we move into 2026, we have 2 "confirmed" Star Wars movies for May 2026 (Mando & Grogu) and May 2027 (Starfighter), along with the re-re-re release of Star Wars "A New Hope" in February 2027.

Is this the "last hurrah" for Star Wars movies if Mando & Grogu and Starfighter fail? I think it is a safe bet that "A New Hope" will do extremely well, if it is in fact the "original 1977 version, untouched by Lucas hands, version" BUT the other 2.....I think it is up in the air. In addition, based on the economics needed to make a move successful (recouping 2.5-3x's it marketing budget), are these Disney's "last hope" with Star Wars movies AND, if they are not received well, what is the future for Star Wars?
--Jeremiah

A real professional would say something like "who can say?" I can tell you right now that I'd probably bet on there always being more Star Wars movies in some stage of development for as long as theatrical exhibition remains a viable business. Will they come out? Who knows. We never got the Lando movie or the Waititi movie or the Game of Thrones guys movie or Rian Johnson's new movies or whatever Feige was working on and so on and so forth... but they keep trying, darn it. There is a lot of money to be made here. There are precious few franchises that can boast a potential $1 billion in ticket sales, and Disney owns most of them: Avatar, Star Wars, Marvel, Zootopia, its own live action remakes, and so on.

If George Lucas were still in charge I would expect Star Wars to go away for a decade or more on the big screen. Disney wants your money and their investors demand this kind of production to continue. Nobody's going to pay Disney's specific royalties without new movies and TV shows.

The big companies - Disney, especially - do not let franchises lay dormant forever. We're getting new Alien, Planet of the Apes, and Predator movies semi-regularly. Disney does sequels, reboots, and live-action remakes of its classic animated fare. One of the few marketable movies to escape this is The Nightmare Before Christmas and my understanding is it's because Tim Burton has veto power. I imagine you may not see annual movies forever or for long, but you won't go more than 10 years without a new film or some new form of television-flavored entertainment product.

As studio heads change, you bet they'll comb over their portfolio and reevaluate things. If Bob Iger's successor doesn't make a huge fuss about getting Star Wars on the big screen, you can bet the next guy will. Star Wars is no longer a startup controlled by its founder and nobody is going to let a billion dollar franchise go without a new installment as long as the potential for profit exists. Thousands of jobs and billions of dollars at hundreds of companies depend on big box office from Disney's IP.

What would I do if I were Disney? Less, and more. A movie every 3 years tops, and roughly monthly live-action episodes on streaming. If you can make episodes 60-70 minutes and just give us one a month, treating them more like 1970s-1980s comic book stories? I'd like that. Get a new story every month. Get plenty of time to get product in order. Give fans time to (gasp) rewatch it. One "Full-Size Bar" episode per month would probably be a cheaper thing for Disney to make, with the occasional feature-length special, when compared to cranking out dozens and dozens of episodes a year. TV is a medium that continues to transform and find itself. We've seen "a novel for television," I think it's time to try something pulpier that might actually save the studios a few bucks.

What will Disney do? Look at the Muppets. They will not let it die, despite lagging interest as time goes on. The last new movie was 2014, but I think it is unlikely we'll never see another one. None of those movies have ever cleared $100 million, but there are eight of them over 46 years. Another streaming special is coming. And is any of the new stuff their finest work? No, but people tune in. It doesn't have to be good, as long as people still watch it. (As to if any of them are good, I would say they're not great.)

Become a Patron!

Special thanks to our generous Patreon patrons, especially: JT, Jared, Bobb, Christopher, Daniel, Dan, Tim, Jayson, Matthew, Michael, Robert, Stephen, Todd DrReiCow, Eddie, Jeremy, Mario, and Todd! Thanks for helping us keep the servers on!

FIN

We are short on questions for next week. Send 'em if you got 'em!

My predictions for upcoming movies? The Mandalorian and Grogu will "disappoint," likely making more than an underperorming Marvel movie but nowhere near the sequel trilogy money. I'm going to guess $450 million domestic. Starfighter might "flop," $300m unless it has some incredible hook nobody is talking about. (Rey/Grogu cameo?) I would be surprised if a Star Wars 1977 reissue does more than $150-$200 million, and I am guessing nobody is going to make cranky old fans happy with the merchandise offering. (Note: as I write this, I can't pry out of anybody what is being made for the 50th.) The era of fans dressing up and waiting in a line party is long over. The shine has come off the franchise, and I assume fans in their 50s or 60s aren't going to line up to buy tickets to rewatch a movie they own on multiple home video formats without one massive marketing effort. And maybe Lucasfilm has got one up their sleeves.

Last week after press time, the rumor/news hit about Kathleen Kennedy stepping down from Lucasfilm. She was a huge movie producer before taking the gig, and while some fans think she was part of the problem I'd say her track record is about as good as anybody's in showbiz. Better, even. George Lucas directed and produced six live-action Star Wars movies, and their quality goes up if you were 11 or under when you first saw them. Kathleen Kennedy was head of the studio for five movies and over 100 episodes of TV-flavored content. As far as I know it wasn't her gig to pitch stories, to direct, to edit, to produce, or to act. Some of those projects were great, and some of them weren't - they made and released more in 10 years than George did in 40. If George Lucas actually followed through with every idea he had or was beholden to shareholders and bosses above his head, I'm sure we'd have a lot more Star Wars that not everybody loved. Also these movies are things we loved as kids, and sometimes that's why we love them. Would you have a soft spot for Return of the Jedi if it came out today? Probably not.

I'm not going to say Resistance was a lost gem or The Acolyte was robbed, but every projects had something interesting going for it. (I might hold that back from The Rise of Skywalker, though.) Four of her five Star Wars movies made over a billion dollars. (And Solo is better than The Rise of Skywalker, so obviously the audiences are wrong here.) Most of the live action shows are entertaining, they experimented with younger kid-focused animation which I have a hard time judging for various reasons, and a lot of the cartoon stuff was decent. Repetitive in spots, sure, but that seems to be par for the course for streaming entertainment. As much as these shows would be better with new villains and different conflicts, repetition keeps budgets low and this is show business, especially when your founder exits the company after a sale. Star Wars is increasingly about Star Wars more than it's about whatever it was George Lucas came across as a kid or that influenced his dreams and nightmares, and that's the sort of thing that can happen with any franchise over decades. Except Andor, Andor understood what to put under the hood of a new show.

Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan (allegedly) have a challenging job ahead of them. You've got a generation of cynical fans turning 50 and 60 that want to feel like kids again, and that's just not going to happen. lso, there is a parallel business of streamers who will only get to eat if they can make content that people watch. It's a lot easier to make a 3-hour video about how a movie is crap than it is to say that much about how much you liked The Empire Strikes Back. There's a sense of magic and wonder that is tough to get back - particularly as we get more savvy about special effects and the nature of show biz. I don't envy them, and in their position I'd probably try to make more frequent lower-budget stories than big box office bonanzas. But if the bottom is allegedly starting to fall out of the streaming content machine as well as theatrical showings, the Kathleen Kennedy era might be remembered as one of the richest eras of Star Wars stories ever. Perhaps more by the intended 4-11-year old audience, years after we're too old to complain on the internet. There's a lot of good stuff in there, and if I had to sit through The Rise of Skywalker to get Andor and The Mandalorian and Rebels? I'll take that deal.

However it shakes out, I'm not going to dump on the past 10 years as being a dud. From 1977-1987, we got three movies, two TV movies, a TV special, and two cartoons. I would say we got the equivalent of that - and more - over the past decade, plus some other at-bats that sometimes clicked and sometimes didn't.

--Adam Pawlus

Got questions? Email me with Q&A in the subject line now! I'll answer your questions as soon as time (or facts) permit.

Social media? Sure. Bluesky | Fediverse | Mastodon | Tumblr | Instagram

I'm on Instagram! All Pictures from a GameBoy Camera.