>>48520581I don't care about Star Wars one way or the other (I saw the original trilogy once as a kid just to say I saw them). The issue mainly came from Disney expecting a MUCH bigger boom from the new movies. They ended up sinking a lot of money into tie-in projects with low or negative returns, like the Hans Solo spin-off movie or the theme park expansion. Merchandise sales under-performed significantly, too. To make matters worse, episode 8 and 9 both had significantly higher budgets than episode 7, but made a lot less overall (episode 9 only made about half as much money as episode 7. I think it still managed to out-perform episode 8 overall due to episode 8 having a way, way, way higher advertising budget).
Disney did make their initial investment back already (although that doesn't factor in the money they bled out on tie-ins), so it's not a complete flop. Disney was just expecting way more than they got when they bought it.
