Disney must disclose unequal pay in Star Wars series “The Acolyte”

Documents filed by Disney have revealed that its latest Star Wars spinoff series The Acolyte is not really a force for equality, even though the cast is notoriously predominantly female.

According to the documents, at the beginning of April last year, when production of the streaming series was still in full swing, only 30 percent of the 695 employees were female and across the entire workforce, the average hourly wage of women was 19.4 percent lower than that of men.

Set about 100 years before the events of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, The Acolyte sees a former Jedi student join forces with her master to investigate a series of crimes.

The hunger GamesAmandla Stenberg has a dual role as former student Osha and her evil twin sister Mae, who stands out in the first scene by portraying Carrie-Anne Moss’ character Indara. British model Jodie Turner-Smith plays the twins’ mother Aniseya, who also leads a coven of witches who want to take them in. Osha escapes their clutches and goes on the hunt for Mae alongside two Jedis played by Spanish actress Dafne Keen – Wolverine’s female clone in 2018’s The Wolverine. Logan – and Rebecca Henderson, wife of The Acolytes Showrunner Leslye Headland.

Black and international actors fill the show’s ranks, leading to it being called the most inclusive and diverse live-action series. war of stars project ever. It has also led to the show being branded as “woke,” which was reportedly the driving force behind its plummeting rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Just one day after the show launched on June 4, its viewership was at 50%, but since then the power has been in turmoil.

Four of the eight episodes have been broadcast on the Disney+ streaming platform so far and the reviews have been overwhelmingly negative. So much so that the audience share is now only 14%, which The Acolyte a worse rating than the one panned by critics Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the infamous 1978 Star Wars: Holiday Special.

The low rating has been attributed to unjustified reviews. The main evidence of this is the fact that the show’s critics score on Rotten Tomatoes is a respectable 85%. However, a closer look at the reviews in some of the most reputable print media reveals serious structural problems with the show.

“Most of the pieces are at best inconsistent, if not just disappointing,” said Rolling Stone while USA today added that the show was “full of logical fallacies, cheesy dialogue and nonsensical plots.” That’s an accusation that could perhaps be leveled at the best films in the world. war of stars Saga, but the other major criticisms certainly cannot.

The London Times excellent The Acolyte two out of five due to the show’s “dark explanatory dialogues”, while the New York Times said that “beneath the familiar exterior lies the visceral attraction that war of stars can conjure up at its best, doesn’t manifest itself. The characters speak in platitudes about loss, grief, loyalty and revenge, and the cast mostly works at the level of dialogue.”

Under Disney war of stars seems to be suffering from a strategy that can be described as the “Three Is” – innovation, institutionalization and repetition. It’s a similar approach to the one the studio has taken with its Marvel Comics films, and it begins to break new ground in this area.

After the takeover by Disney war of stars Acquired by Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4 billion, the deal introduced an innovation by pairing younger actors – Daisy Ridley and John Boyega – with Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, who had starred in the original film trilogy three decades earlier.

The new group’s first performance took place in 2015. Star Wars: The Force Awakens which kept the spirit of the original films but brought the series up to date with cutting edge effects and the addition of a cute, retro-inspired scene-stealing robot character named BB-8. Disney planned a new film trilogy from the start, and as we revealed, their revenue and profits were steadily declining.

The films increasingly focused on Ridley’s character Rey, which was part of the second step of Disney’s strategy – institutionalization. Disney acquired Lucasfilm to attract more male viewers and to complement its roster of princesses that appealed to young girls. When the box office of the war of stars As the films’ popularity waned, Disney cast its net wider to attract new viewers.

Rey became a pin-up for the female audience and in 2016 Disney Rogue One: A Star Wars Storya spin-off film with another female lead, played by British actress Felicity Jones. The Acolyte takes this strategy even further by developing a diverse cast that is designed to appeal to an even broader audience. This part of the strategy is not only smart, but also absolutely admirable. The problem is that the strategy doesn’t stop there.

Step three is iteration, as Disney tries to make as much money as possible from war of stars as possible. The Acolyte is the sixth war of stars streaming series have appeared in the last five years alone, and another is on the way, along with several films. The over-production of productions is destroying an important part of the formula that made the original war of stars Trilogy so successful – a rarity. Fans had to wait years for the next part of the saga and this created an enormous hype that has now evaporated, as the next installment is released just a few days after the previous one.

In contrast to Marvel films, which Star WarsThe shows are not obviously linked, although it may seem that way. There are so many productions that it’s hard to keep up with them all, and if you miss one, a vicious cycle begins, as fans may be hesitant to watch the next series if they don’t understand it.

Even more problematic is that the more shows Disney has to come up with, the more storylines it has to come up with, and the harder it is for them to continue to have the visceral appeal that war of stars can be described in its best moments as the New York Times Put it down.

Disney is now in a dilemma. The best course of action would be to stop production altogether. war of stars series and build hype in a future installment, but if that happens, revenues would drop, which would be anything but a dream ticket for shareholders. Accordingly, Disney must continue to produce series, making it increasingly difficult to maintain quality.

Disney has produced so many Star Wars series that it has inevitably hit the jackpot with some of them, especially The Mandalorian which follows the exploits of a rugged, armored bounty hunter and his unlikely companion, a floppy-eared green alien named Grogu. The series launched in 2019 and won 15 Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

In fact, the series was so successful with critics that it was renewed for two more seasons. The last aired last year. A movie is also scheduled to be released in 2026, but no further seasons are planned in the meantime. This proves that Disney really understands the power of rarity when it has a coveted product in its hands.

Despite the gloomy reviews, Disney says that The Acolyte had 4.8 million views on its first day of release and 11.1 million views in its first five days, making it the studio’s biggest series premiere of 2024 to date. Judging financial success is not so easy, as Disney+ subscribers have access to all of the studio’s content, so subscription revenue cannot be attributed to specific shows. In contrast, there is no doubt about how much The Acolyte manufacturing costs.

The show was filmed between October 2022 and June 2023 at Shinfield Studios in the UK, about an hour outside of London. Studios filming in the UK will receive a refund of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the country, but will have to provide detailed financial disclosures.

As we have already announced, pre-production of The Acolyte Cost 48.5 million dollars (38.3 million pounds), which is more than the preparatory work for Villain One. Even the pre-production costs of the main parts of Disney’s war of stars Saga were not far away The Acolyte. Disney spent only 17% more on pre-production The Last Jedi in 2017 and it was an absolute hit thanks to an A-list cast of classic characters, most notably Hamill in the iconic role of Luke Skywalker

Expenses are not the only disclosure the UK government requires of studios filming in the country. Any employer with 250 or more employees (excluding those employed by agencies working within their business) is also required to disclose the pay gap between men and women.

This not only shows that the average hourly wage of women working in The Acolyte was 19.4% lower than men’s wages, but the median hourly wage was also 13.5% lower. Although there are more men than women in the lowest and the two middle hourly wage groups, 53% of employees in the highest hourly wage group were also male.

Inequality has been a hot topic for Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy lately. But not this kind of inequality. She defends Headland’s leadership of The Acolyte in an interview with the New York Times She said: “I think Leslye struggled a bit with that. I think a lot of the women who war of stars struggle with that a little more. Because the fanbase is so male-dominated, sometimes they get attacked in ways that can be quite personal.”

Before he addressed the lack of women in the war of stars fanbase, maybe she should have made sure that those working behind the scenes on her latest show were paid as much as the men. Until that happens, all they can do is keep hoping for a new hope.