“For all the disappointment around Solo,” he says, “I don’t believe any four consecutive films have ever delivered greater cumulative profits than Disney’s four Star Wars films. Star Wars remains a beloved franchise, one with greater global awareness than ever before, and greater representation/diversity too. Its themes are also universal and timeless… There is no reason why Star Wars can have only one film and one TV series per year, but Marvel can have three films and continue to see improved performance on an annual basis. Come 2021 too, Marvel will have four feature films and two TV series per year. Scarcity matters, but you become special through what you do more than what you don’t.”

Instead, he argues, the problems experienced by Disney are less to do with audiences’ tolerance for Star Wars, and more a result of its own poor planning. Or more specifically: of a rushed production cycle, with Disney frantically committing to six films in the space of eight years; of the hiring and firing of four apparently unsuitable directors across four different films, like the inexperienced Josh Trank or Solo’s Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, whose improvisational tone reportedly provoked the ire of Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy; and of a lack of a centralised and overarching creative vision, à la George Lucas.

“I think a wholly new story, run by a single creative lead, plus some good luck (which is key to every hit film), better planning and slower production timeline could quickly reverse the franchise’s trajectory,” says Ball.

The stories of the future

It does seem as though Disney has taken on board some of the criticisms expressed by Ball. Disney CEO Bob Iger recently announced that Star Wars’s film output will go into a three-year hiatus after The Rise of Skywalker, with the company focussing instead on Disney+ shows like The Mandalorian and an upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series starring Ewan McGregor. A realisation, perhaps, that live-action spin-off stories are better served by the smaller scale of television, rather than the grandiosity of cinema.