But also - Jon Favreau could just be a hack. (affectionate)

I believe that just as easily, he’s always been of a piece with the Russos, Shawn Levy, and JJ Abrams - business is a part of their art. Grogu was always his baby - his marketing savvy - he doesn’t need the studio to tell him to retreat back into it.

And that doesn’t mean execs didn’t, but at what point in the blanket diagnoses does Gilroy’s blank check from saving R1 reconcile with what should be Favreau’s for delivering Mandalorian?

In any case, I think most of the problems in everything else are truly just Star Wars as a property being disadvantaged for being high concept and spectacle-driven, demanding more time and budget for prep, VFX, and production design than the average TV show. That is what goes beyond the “typical” - and again, these are not typical times. All of that under the pressures facing every part of the industry is going to blowback seemingly worse, especially relative to the standard we were used to for it in Old Media.

Going back to BOBF onwards as delineator, that is precisely where the shift I discuss in my previous post begins. At the point production there starts, Mando has been a success, and Chapek is well into his term, having put into motion his D+ pump. Obi-Wan, Andor, Ahsoka, and Acolyte are materializing around this moment in time. If anything, it’s the opposite of interference - lack of support or blind faith - that proves to be a weakness and/or strength of these productions. Iger sucks, but Chapek notoriously didn’t care what he was greenlighting. It’s all a part of the context we should be looking at.