It has emerged that Disney’s sequel series to 1980s sword and sorcery movie Willow cost millions of Dollars more to make than The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance which also recently rebooted a beloved fantasy franchise from the same era.
The prequel to the 1982 classic The Dark Crystal, Age of Resistance charts the story of three elf-like creatures called Gelflings as they battle the tyrannical Skeksis and seek to save their planet, Thra, from destruction. Like the original, it was produced by The Jim Henson Company and largely features animatronic characters which earned it high praise when it debuted on Netflix
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It has an 89% “certified fresh” rating on Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes with the audience score even higher at 94%. RogerEbert.com, critic Matt Fagerholm described Age of Resistance as “quite simply, one of the all-time great fantasy epics” and added that its puppetry is “most closely aligned with Jim Henson’s humanistic philosophy since his son Brian helmed 1992’s holiday perennial, The Muppet Christmas Carol.”
Age of Resistance went on to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children’s Program as well as a Critics’ Choice Television Award for best animated series. In contrast, although the Willow sequel series has an 84% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience only gave it 65%. Willow’s audience was reportedly amongst the lowest for a show on the Disney+ streaming platform.
Industry analysts Samba TV claimed that only 481,000 households watched the Willow show in its first five days of release in November 2022 despite two episodes being available. At the other end of the spectrum, the debut episode of hit Marvel streaming show Loki attracted 2.5 million households over the same timeframe according to Samba TV.
Despite being a critical success, Age of Resistance was dropped after just one season even though there is “a concrete document for season two” according to a 2019 Indiewire interview with Jeffrey Addiss, one of the leading lights behind the show. It bears an eerie similarity with the fate of Willow which was also not renewed for a second season despite showrunner Jonathan Kasdan telling Deadline that a second season has been written.
The difference between them is the cost. As we recently revealed, Disney spent a staggering $105.9 million on pre-production, filming and some post-production of Willow with a lot more work remaining to be done when that total was tallied. And it only covered eight episodes whereas Age of Resistance had ten. The latter’s total budget of $97.7 million (£76.8 million) covers everything from pre-production to principal photography and post production. Further costs certainly won’t be incurred as the Henson subsidiary that made the series has been shut down.
Like Willow, Age of Resistance was produced in the United Kingdom which is where the late Jim Henson himself made his name in the 1970s. Henson made the original Muppet Show in the UK starting a worldwide phenomenon which culminated in his heirs selling the rights to the characters to Disney in 2004.
Filming in the UK shines a spotlight on the otherwise secretive costs of streaming productions. Budgets of streaming shows are usually confidential as studios combine the cost of them in their overall expenses and don’t itemise how much they spent on each one.
Shows made in the UK are exceptions. They benefit from the UK’s Television Tax Relief scheme which allows studios to claim a cash reimbursement of up to 25% of the money they spend there. To qualify, shows must pass a number of tests including proving that at least 10% of the core costs of the production relate to activities in the UK. In order to demonstrate this, studios set up a separate Television Production Company (TPC) there for each show.
These TPCs have to file publicly-available financial statements showing everything from the headcount and salaries to the total cost of the production and the amount of cash they have been reimbursed.
The companies usually have code names so that they don’t raise attention when filing for permits to film on location. The one behind Age of Resistance is called First Trine Productions, which is a play on the words ‘first time’ (referring to the show’s status as a prequel) and ‘Trine’, the orbital period of the Gelflings’ home of Thra.
Its financial statements reveal that the $97.7 million cost of making the series “was in excess of the budget” with one of the biggest expenses being a total of $5.3 million (£4.2 million) which was spent on the production crew. It peaked at just 51 people which was remarkably only 38% of the number who worked on Willow despite puppeteering being labor intensive.
A $19.6 million (£15.4 million) cash reimbursement brought the show’s net spending down to $78.1 million which is only $2.3 million less than Willow spent thanks to it receiving an additional grant. However, Willow’s costs are still set to soar thanks to its post-production spending as although the show replicated some of the practical effects found in the 1988 original, it also added extensive Computer Generated Imagery (CGI), which was even used to create castles.
In contrast, around 98% of Age of Resistance was filmed live according to an interview with its director Louis Leterrier. CGI was largely used to digitally remove puppeteering equipment and operators leaving more budget for a heavyweight cast.
The list of its voice actors reads like a roll call for the Oscars and includes Helena Bonham Carter, Anya Taylor-Joy, Taron Egerton, Mark Hamill, Jason Isaacs, Simon Pegg and Benedict Wong. It even had an A List narrator in the form of Sigourney Weaver.
This all contributed to the show becoming a fan favorite which is just what Disney is looking for right now. A number of its releases this year have been criticized for their CGI. Once-cute cartoon characters from The Little Mermaid took on an alien appearance in this year’s live action version of the story whilst one of the villains from Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was compared to a character from 2003 childrens’ movie Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over.
This has been blamed on over-worked visual effects (VFX) staff who have had to work on Marvel’s massive pipeline of movies and streaming shows. The disenchantment formed the backdrop to the firing of Marvel’s president of physical and post-production, VFX and animation production, Victoria Alonso, in March but it didn’t stop there. Next week, Marvel’s VFX crews will begin to vote on whether to unionize and if they take that historic step it could increase the likelihood of them joining writers and actors on strike.
Going back to basics with visual effects wouldn’t just navigate this hurdle and appeal to fans, it would also cut costs which is a top priority for Disney. The studio has been on a cost-cutting drive since its chief executive Bob Iger returned to its helm in November last year.
Three months later he told investors that the studio needs to “reduce costs on everything that we make because, while we’re extremely proud of what’s on the screen, it’s gotten to a point where it’s extraordinarily expensive.”
Willow is testimony to that and it was born in the days of lavish spending in a bid to attract subscribers. That expense might be justifiable if the end result fuels a surge in fan interest but not if it flounders like Willow.
Disney has so many divisions that it can turn a profit from a fan favorite franchise even if it flops on television or at the box office. If Willow had generated enough interest from fans it could have fueled the sale of merchandise, clothing and video games as well as spawning theme park rides which boost attendance at Disney’s parks and offset losses on the original production. Henson doesn’t have the scale to do that so it remains to be seen if the Age of Resistance follow up will see the light of day.
When it was canceled, Lisa Henson, Jim’s daughter and one of the show’s executive producers, said “we know fans are eager to learn how this chapter of The Dark Crystal saga concludes and we’ll look for ways to tell that story in the future.”
Just a few months ago Leterrier added, “I still have hope that it can come back. I mean, who would have thought that 37 years later [we would’ve been able to bring Dark Crystal back]? So, I have high hopes. You know, it might not be me. It might be my grandson or, you know, Jim Henson’s great-grandson, but somebody will direct the rest of this show because we need to tell that story.” Time will tell if Disney will step in as the prince charming yet again.
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