For many streaming services, the post-pandemic awakening to reality has been transformative, with subscribers disappearing and those who remain forced to pay increasingly more. Even seemingly immovable giants like Disney have felt the knife at their throats and with a loss of over ten million subscribers in the last quarter alone, as well as a series of extremely costly flops, hence why the cost-cutting measures have been sweeping and swift from CEO Bob Iger.
Dismissed staff, increased subscription prices, tighter controls on account sharing and series being scrapped or cancelled altogether. This has become the new norm. The nostalgic Willow on Disney+ was probably one of the company's biggest blunders, but it's only now that it's actually been revealed how much the show cost them, and it's no small amount. According to Forbes, it is a whopping $100 million that has been flushed down the toilet.
A violent failure and something that neither audiences nor critics ever took to. Stranger Things and 80s nostalgia are all well and good, but an aging Warwick Davis was clearly not enough of a draw for the Willow series, which Disney is probably wishing it never conjured up from the history books.
What did you think of Willow?