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      In ‘Ahsoka,’ a ‘Star Wars’ Fan Favorite Returns

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      The new spinoff, coming soon to Disney+, stars Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano, an obscure but beloved alien Jedi.For many casual viewers, “Star Wars” is the domain of familiar faces: the heroic Jedi Luke Skywalker, the nefarious Sith Lord Darth Vader, the roguish smuggler Han Solo and the tenacious Princess Leia.But over the years, the universe of “Star Wars” has expanded far beyond the realm originally imagined by George Lucas. For viewers who have not been inclined or able to consume all of the seemingly endless array of “Star Wars” sequels, prequels, TV spinoffs and book and video game adaptations, keeping up with the recurring characters can feel a bit like trying to memorize an intergalactic phone book. You might know the droids R2-D2, C3PO and BB-8. But what about L0-LA59, C1-10P or L3-37?The title of the latest “Star Wars” series, “Ahsoka,” premiering Aug. 23 on Disney+, may be unfamiliar even for viewers who consider themselves relatively knowledgeable about the franchise. The title character, played by Rosario Dawson in the series, has never appeared in a live-action “Star Wars” movie. (She was heard briefly in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” voiced by Ashley Eckstein.) Nevertheless, she is considered by fans to be one of the most important figures in the fictional universe.Like the other streaming series shepherded into existence by the writers and directors Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni — including “The Mandalorian,” “The Book of Boba Fett” and “Obi-Wan Kenobi” — “Ahsoka” was created by and for committed and knowledgeable “Star Wars” fans, and it is deeply interconnected with the franchise’s earlier shows and movies (and even some comic books and stand-alone novels). These series are generally full of Easter eggs, packed with lore and rife with subtle references. A certain familiarity with the rest of the stuff that has happened in “Star Wars” outside of the three main film trilogies is, if not quite required, then certainly very helpful.Do words like “Thrawn,” “Togruta” or “Ashla” — not to mention “Ahsoka” itself — mean little or nothing to you? Read on.Ahsoka has links to some of the most well-known “Star Wars” characters but has not appeared in the franchise’s live-action films.Lucasfilm/Disney+Who is Ahsoka?Ahsoka Tano is a member of the Togruta species from the planet Shili. As a young Jedi in training, or Padawan, she was assigned to learn the ways of the Force under Anakin Skywalker, becoming his apprentice shortly after the events of “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones.”Brash and arrogant, she didn’t take easily to Anakin’s training, and in the beginning the two had a tumultuous relationship. Over time, however, they came to trust and rely on each other, and after enduring much hardship together in the lead-up to the events of “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith,” the two became extremely close. This period of Ahsoka’s life is the subject of the animated feature film “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.”Has she appeared onscreen since?Several times. Ahsoka is the main character of the animated series “The Clone Wars,” which ran on the Cartoon Network from 2008 to 2014 and was revived for another season on Disney+ in 2020. The series depicts her deepening relationship with her mentor, Anakin, and her apprehension as she watches him drift closer to the dark side of the Force. It also involves a lot of complex Jedi intrigue — including her trial before a Jedi Council after having been framed for a heinous crime and a foray into a strange otherworldly realm where she is killed and magically resuscitated.When the evil Emperor Palpatine initiates Order 66 toward the end of “Revenge of the Sith,” commanding the execution of all Jedi at the hands of the Clone Troopers, Ahsoka flees the system to the Outer Rim and goes into hiding under the alias Ashla. Eventually, she takes part in the formation of what will ultimately become the Empire-defying Rebel Alliance, operating as a top-secret intelligence agent who helps lead a network of spies. These events are the basis of the animated series “Star Wars Rebels” which aired from 2014 to 2018 on the children’s network Disney XD. (Eckstein voiced the character in the animated shows and films.)Since then, Ahsoka has had what amount to extended cameo appearances on both “The Mandalorian” and “The Book of Boba Fett.” Ahsoka was portrayed in live action for the first time (by Dawson) in “The Mandalorian,” helping the title bounty hunter (Pedro Pascal) learn that his ward, the Child, was in fact a powerful young Jedi named Grogu. (Known in our world most commonly as Baby Yoda.) We last saw her in “Boba Fett” dropping in on Grogu’s one-on-one training with Luke Skywalker and sharing a few words of advice with Mando before heading off on adventures of her own.Is she powerful?Very much so. “The Clone Wars” depicted Ahsoka as a young Jedi with an immense amount of latent power, and since then, she has realized her true potential. Toward the end of that series, she dueled the Sith Lord Darth Maul, the antagonist of “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace,” and defeated him handily. At the end of “Rebels,” she took on her former master, known by then as Darth Vader, and the two were evenly matched with lightsabers.Natasha Liu Bordizzo plays Sabine Wren, another character who previously appeared in “Star Wars Rebels.”Lucasfilm/Disney+What’s she up to in ‘Ahsoka’?Although the story of the series remains under wraps, it is apparent from the trailers that it takes place somewhat contemporaneously with “The Mandalorian” and “The Book of Boba Fett.” This period is about five years after the events of “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi,” which included the destruction of the (second) Death Star that marked the end of the Galactic Empire.During her time on “The Mandalorian,” Ahsoka mentioned that she was in pursuit of Grand Admiral Thrawn, and it seems likely that “Ahsoka” will find her continuing with this mission. The trailers also show Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), a former bounty hunter turned rebel soldier who was previously featured in “Rebels.”Who is Grand Admiral Thrawn?Thrawn, Ahsoka’s would-be adversary, is a fan-favorite “Star Wars” villain who was first introduced in the early 1990s in several popular “Star Wars” novels by the author Timothy Zahn. Although Disney decreed that all “Star Wars” books and spinoff content are not canon — or part of the official “Star Wars” narrative — during the production of “The Force Awakens,” Thrawn was so beloved by fans that he was reintroduced to the franchise in “Rebels” in 2016. The news that Lars Mikkelsen, who voiced Thrawn in “Rebels,” will be playing him in “Ahsoka” inspired passionate cheers in April at the most recent Star Wars Celebration fan convention, in London.In “Rebels,” Thrawn was a villainous blue-skinned alien who is a high-ranking member of the Empire’s army. Since “Ahsoka” takes place many years later, after the dissolution of the Empire, the exact nature of the admiral’s role as big bad remains unclear. More

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      For Disney, Streaming Losses and TV’s Decline Are a One-Two Punch

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      The company experienced a sharp decline in its traditional TV business for the second straight quarter and will raise subscription prices for its streaming services.Robert A. Iger’s urgent need to overhaul Disney — to turn its streaming division into a profitable enterprise and pull back on its troubled traditional television business — came into sharp relief on Wednesday.Disney’s streaming operation lost $512 million in the most-recent quarter, the company said, bringing total streaming losses since 2019, when Disney+ was introduced, to more than $11 billion. Disney+ lost roughly 11.7 million subscribers worldwide in the three months that ended July 1, for a new total of 146.1 million.All the decline came from a low-priced version of Disney+ in India. Last year, Disney lost a bid to renew the expensive rights to Indian Premier League cricket matches. Excluding India, Disney+ gained 800,000 subscribers, primarily overseas.To make streaming profitable, Mr. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, has shifted the focus at Disney+ away from brisk subscriber growth, which requires expensive marketing campaigns. Instead, Disney has been trying to make more money from the Disney+ subscribers it already has. The monthly price for access to an ad-free version of Disney+ rose to $11 in December, from $8.Another hefty price increase is on the way. Starting on Oct. 12, the ad-free version will cost $14, Disney said. Hulu, which is also controlled by Disney, will begin charging $18 for ad-free access, up from $15. As an incentive, Disney will begin selling a new streaming package — ad-free access to both Disney+ and Hulu — for $20 a month starting on Sept. 6.The ad-supported options for both Disney+ and Hulu will remain the same, at $8. “We’re obviously trying with our pricing strategy to migrate more subs to the advertiser-supported tier,” Mr. Iger told analysts on a conference call. The pricing news, along with a vow by Mr. Iger to follow Netflix by cracking down on password sharing, sent Disney shares up roughly 2 percent in after-hours trading.Disney still relies on old-line channels like ESPN and ABC for roughly a third of its operating profits — and those outlets are being maimed by cord cutting, sports programming costs and advertiser pullback. Disney’s traditional channels had $1.9 billion in quarterly operating income, down 23 percent from a year earlier. Disney cited lower ad sales at ABC, partly because of viewership declines, and lower payments from ESPN subscribers, along with higher sports programming costs. (On a positive note, ESPN ad sales increased 10 percent.)It was the second consecutive quarter in which Disney’s traditional TV business recorded a sharp decline in operating income.Disney is exploring a once-unthinkable sale of a stake in ESPN. Bob Levey/Getty ImagesDisney is now exploring a once-unthinkable sale of a stake in ESPN. Not all of it, Mr. Iger has made clear. But he wants “strategic partners that could either help us with distribution or content,” he said during an interview with CNBC last month. Disney has held talks with the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball about taking a minority stake.Earlier this summer, Mr. Iger brought in two former senior Disney executives, Kevin Mayer and Thomas O. Staggs, to consult on ESPN strategy with James Pitaro, the channel’s president, and help put together any deal. Mr. Mayer and Mr. Staggs were both viewed as possible successors to Mr. Iger when they were at Disney, ultimately leaving when they were passed over to start their own media company, Candle Media, with the private equity firm Blackstone as the backer.Their return has sent the Hollywood and Wall Street gossip mills into overdrive. Are Mr. Mayer and Mr. Staggs now back in the running for Disney’s top job? Is Blackstone a potential investor in ESPN? Maybe the whole company is being prepped for a sale — with Apple as the buyer?The first two questions did not come up on Disney’s conference call, and Mr. Iger batted away the third. “I just am not going to speculate about the potential for Disney to be acquired by any company, whether it’s a technology company or not,” he said. “Obviously, anyone who wants to speculate about these things would have to immediately consider the global regulatory environment. I’ll say no more than that.”ESPN on Tuesday announced a 10-year deal with a casino company to create an online sports betting brand and push more aggressively into the lucrative world of online gambling. Notably, the $2 billion deal allows ESPN to rake in gambling money without — in keeping with Disney’s family-friendly brand — becoming a sports book itself.Mr. Iger is also contending with dual strikes in Hollywood. Unionized screenwriters have now been on strike for 100 days and actors for 27. They want higher pay from streaming services and guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence by studios.On the conference call, Mr. Iger addressed the strikes for the first time since mid-July, when he told CNBC — from an elite gathering of chief executives in Idaho — that union leaders were not being “realistic,” prompting an eruption of vitriol on picket lines. On Thursday, reading from a script, Mr. Iger said it was his “fervent hope that we quickly find solutions to the issues that have kept us apart these past few months.”“I am personally committed to working to achieve this result,” he added, saying that he had “deep respect and appreciation” for actors and writers.Disney’s quarter included some encouraging signs. The $512 million streaming loss was 32 percent less than analysts had predicted, for instance. In the fall, quarterly streaming losses reached $1.5 billion. In other words, Mr. Iger’s effort to drastically reduce losses is working. “In spite of a challenging environment in the near term, I’m overwhelmingly bullish about Disney’s future,” Mr. Iger said, noting that the company was on track to exceed a goal, announced in February, to cut $5.5 billion in costs.An 11 percent increase in profitability at Disney’s theme park division — despite weakness at Walt Disney World in Florida — allowed the company to salvage the quarter, to a degree. Companywide revenue totaled $22.3 billion, a 4 percent increase from a year earlier; analysts had expected slightly more. About $2.7 billion in one-time restructuring charges resulted in net loss of $460 million, compared with $1.4 billion in profit a year earlier.Excluding the charges, which were related to the removal of more than 30 underperforming shows and movies from Disney+ and Hulu, Disney reported earnings per share of $1.03. Analysts had expected 95 cents.Growth at Disney’s theme park division came largely from overseas. A year ago, the Shanghai Disney Resort was closed because of the Chinese government’s Covid-19 restrictions. The Shanghai property was open for all of the most-recent quarter. Hong Kong Disneyland also reported improved results. Disney’s five-ship cruise line has also been running at near capacity.Economists have long watched Disney’s domestic theme parks as informal barometers of consumer confidence. Historically, when budgets get tight, families cut back on expensive trips to Disney World. Whether for that reason or another, attendance at the Florida mega-resort declined. Attendance rose at Disneyland, in California.Other theme park operators in Florida have seen similar attendance declines. Some analysts have blamed ticket price increases. Others have said that tourist demand has shifted away from locations that reopened earlier in the pandemic — like Florida — and toward destinations that remained closed for a longer period. More

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      Tony Gilroy Kept the Faith for ‘Andor.’ Its 8 Emmy Nods Are Affirmation.

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      Wednesday was a big day for the Galactic Empire. “Andor,” the Disney+ “Star Wars” prequel series that made its debut last fall, picked up eight Emmy nominations, including one in the best drama category.Over 12 episodes in its first season, the show follows Cassian Andor, the Rebel spy played by Diego Luna, who will eventually carry out the desperate act of espionage depicted in the 2016 film “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” “Andor” has drawn acclaim for its focus on the interior lives of its characters and for homing in on the struggles of ordinary citizens. A second season of the show is forthcoming.The Emmy accolades offer a degree of vindication for the “Star Wars” executives at Disney who made a big and expensive bet on the series, and for the creator of “Andor,” Tony Gilroy, who helped write and oversee “Rogue One.”In an interview on Wednesday, Gilroy discussed the Emmy nods and how “Star Wars” has expanded on TV. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.We know that delving into the “Star Wars” universe comes with pressure. So how does it feel to rack up eight Emmy nominations today?Affirming. The past 10 months have just been such a pleasure. It’s such a huge show, but we made it so privately and quietly. When you make a “Star Wars” show or film, you can’t go out and do a lot of focus groups and a lot of testing. We really never had an audience, and the pressure to finish the show comes right down to the deadline. So really, the audience was our focus group. We really did not know what to expect as we came forward. And to end up here now with eight nominations, it’s just a gas.It’s also the payout on a really huge gamble that Disney took and that Lucasfilm took. This is not for the faint of heart, shows of this scale. And so good on them. I hope they’re happy with this result as well.“Obi-Wan Kenobi” also did well today. And “The Mandalorian” has been a success. What, if anything, does this tell you about transferring “Star Wars” stories from the big screen to TV?It’s economically challenging and its certainly emotionally and chronologically challenging to the creative team. But if you have a story that wants a larger canvas, that opportunity is now available. And there are a lot of stories that don’t want to fit into 120 pages or an hour and a half. It’s a very exciting time to be a storyteller if you can crack the formula of how to make it economically feasible.Some of the praise the show has drawn is for sort of giving us a look at ordinary people in an oppressive world. There is maybe a little less classic “Star Wars” and a little more focus on day-to-day life on distant planets. Was that intentional? Why go that direction?Those are the things that have always interested me. When Disney and Kathy Kennedy [the Lucasfilm president] came and proposed it, it was with that as a sort of genetic mandate for: Let’s go into the kitchen and get out of the dining room; let’s go to the back of the house. There are billions and billions of people that live in the galaxy. Why concentrate on the royal family and a dominant story that’s taken up all the oxygen so far? Why not see if we can’t take a deep dive into what it’s like to be at the ground level as a revolution is sweeping through?Did you have faith that “Star Wars” fans would be interested in that?I’ve been on this — in August it’ll be four years. My ability to believe and have confidence is not a constant. There have been times all the way through where I wondered if I’d made a terrible mess of my life or made the wrong commitment. It’s not like a film where you can sort of bandage yourself up and get through the experience if it’s not going well. This is a long-term commitment and the responsibility is enormous on every level.So I wish I could say that I had faith all the way through, but that would not be true. More

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      ‘Crater’ Review: A Rocking Road Trip

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      This Disney film is surprisingly nimble at incorporating an emotional core into its sci-fi adventure.You wouldn’t necessarily expect a lightly dystopian undertone concerning the oppressive state of labor in a family-friendly science-fiction Disney film (released during the writers’ strike, no less), but “Crater” manages just that while maintaining the lighthearted fun of a children’s adventure.The film, directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, takes place on a lunar mining colony, where miners agree to contracts with the promise that they and their families will earn a ticket to Omega, a distant, habitable planet. Legal loopholes, though, ensure that most don’t actually live to see that day arrive.Yet, via a rule that allows descendants of deceased miners to automatically go to Omega, the film’s young protagonist, Caleb (Isaiah Russell-Bailey, and Hero Hunter in flashbacks), is scheduled to leave the colony after his father (Scott Mescudi, a.k.a. Kid Cudi) dies — only, he doesn’t want to leave his friends behind. Hoping to make the most of their limited time together, Caleb and his friends, with the help of a new girl from Earth (McKenna Grace), steal a lunar rover and embark on a road trip in search of a mysterious crater that Caleb’s father told him to find as a kind of dying wish.It’s refreshing to see Disney invest a decent budget into an original sci-fi world for a live-action film (it’s also a movie that undoubtedly would have flailed at the box office, but may and should find an audience on streaming), and Alvarez makes good use of it. And while it might not have the indelible charm of other children’s classics, “Crater” does well not straining itself trying to please audiences beyond the family crowd. Most of all, the film is surprisingly nimble at incorporating an emotional core that makes its story more interesting than the adventure itself.CraterRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      In ‘A Small Light,’ an Ordinary Woman Helps Anne Frank’s Family

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      A new series on Disney+ and Hulu tells the story of Miep Gies, a secretary who helped Anne Frank and others hide in Amsterdam during World War II.Two days after the Gestapo’s 1944 raid on the annex where Anne Frank and others were hiding, Miep Gies, a seemingly ordinary secretary, and her colleague walked into the hiding place and encountered a chaotic scene left behind by the Nazis.Years later, Gies described what she saw that day as a mess of books, newspapers and other everyday items. “And then we started searching. For what, I don’t know, but we were looking for something,” she said in a 1958 interview. Among the items, she found a red plaid diary. Gies grabbed it and put it in a drawer in her office.She had just saved one of the Holocaust’s most famous accounts: Anne Frank’s diary.On the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, the building that housed Otto Frank’s office is now the Anne Frank House, a museum that tells Anne’s story.Peter Dejong/Associated PressIn the show, Anne Frank is played by Billie Boullet as an angsty girl chafing against the restrictions of German occupation. Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneyThat moment, and much more about Gies’s life and heroism, is at the center of “A Small Light,” a new eight-part series that tells the story of Gies (Bel Powley), her husband, Jan (Joe Cole), and their involvement in Dutch resistance efforts during World War II. The show premieres Monday on National Geographic, and comes to Disney+ and Hulu the following day.Work on “A Small Light” began six years ago, after its showrunners Joan Rater and Tony Phelan, a married couple who used to be producers and screenwriters for “Grey’s Anatomy,” visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Walking around the museum and listening to tour guides, they learned that many people don’t really know the story of the Frank family anymore, let alone the story of the people who helped them, Rater and Phelan said in a recent video interview.Since then, they said, the moral question at the heart of Gies’s story — whether to do the right thing, the wrong thing or nothing at all — has only become more important, given how war, nationalism and antisemitism have once again been spreading across Europe.“When we started this project,” Phelan said, “it certainly didn’t feel as relevant as it feels now.”While the show opens with Gies, who wasn’t Jewish, trying to dodge a Nazi checkpoint, the first episode quickly takes the viewer back to 1934, when Gies was single and living with her adopted Dutch family. She finds employment with Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber) — a stern, fellow German-speaking immigrant — and meets her future husband, a social worker. Much of the first episode follows Gies living life as a modern young woman, meeting friends and going out dancing.Rater and Phelan wanted to give the show a contemporary feel by focusing “A Small Light” not just around war, but also around ordinary people’s ordinary lives being suddenly interrupted.The show’s creators wanted to give the episodes a contemporary feel by focusing not just on war, but also on ordinary people’s ordinary lives being suddenly interrupted.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for Disney“Period pieces for me sometimes feel a bit sepia-toned, and that makes you feel distanced from them,” Powley said. But “A Small Light” didn’t feel that way. “It didn’t feel like I was wearing a costume,” she added.“These people, they had washing machines and toasters. They were living in a modern world and they couldn’t believe, in this modern world that they were living, that these things could happen,” Rater said.While the story of Anne Frank and what happened to her is well known, Gies — who died in 2010 at 100 — largely stayed out of the limelight. She published a memoir, “Anne Frank Remembered,” in 1987 and was involved with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, but much of her story stayed private.“When we started digging, we started putting together these pieces that I don’t know that anybody had ever put together before,” Phelan said. In the course of their research, with the help of a local researcher in the Netherlands, Rater and Phelan discovered that Gies and her husband also helped people hide in their own home, including two nurses.In the show, we see nurses help save babies from being killed by the Nazis, and instead sending them to live in the Dutch countryside. One memorable scene shows how nurses swapped babies for dolls, telling Jewish mothers to lose the dolls on their way to concentration camps.Miep and Jan Gies, pictured in 1957, hid people from the Nazis in their own home, as well as in Miep’s office.Sueddeutsche Zeitung, via AlamyIn the show, Jan is played by Joe Cole, and Miep by Bel Powley.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for Disney“It is such a fascinating, heartbreaking, hard to believe story at times,” Cole, who plays Gies’s husband, said in a video interview.When in 1942, Otto Frank asked Gies to help hide him, his daughters, Anne and Margot, and his wife, Edith, in an annex at their office, Gies didn’t hesitate before saying yes.“She had no idea what she was saying yes to,” Rater said. “And then she had to keep saying yes for two years.”This was until a warm day in August 1944 when Nazis raided the office and found the eight people — the Frank family and four others — hiding in the annex.“A Small Light” was shot in the Netherlands — in Amsterdam and Harlem — and in Prague.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneyIn “A Small Light,” Gies’s decision to help despite the dangers and disruption this posed to her life (she kept the secret, brought food and books and more), her unwavering spirit and her reluctance to be seen as a hero makes the viewer ask: What would I have done in that situation? The show’s title is taken from a quote by Gies: “Even a regular secretary, a housewife or a teenager can turn on a small light in a dark room.”The show “is about your personal dynamics that are interrupted by the war,” said Schreiber who recently spent time in Ukraine raising money for humanitarian aid. “That’s part of what I saw in Ukraine. These people’s lives have been interrupted and they try to continue.”“A Small Light” was shot in the Netherlands — in Amsterdam and Harlem — and Prague, where the interior scenes were filmed in a three-story replica of Otto Frank’s Amsterdam office, where the annex was hidden behind a bookcase. (The original building, on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, is now the Anne Frank House.)While “A Small Light” has moments of levity and snippets of life’s mundanity despite the war raging outside, the episodes gradually become more intense, leading up to the inevitable betrayal that doomed all the people in the annex except for Otto Frank, Anne’s father.For Powley, the show never felt like a period piece. “It didn’t feel like I was wearing a costume,” she said.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneySchreiber, who is Jewish, said he was often asked to play roles in Holocaust films. “I hate the narrative that we went like lambs to the slaughter,” which is common in such movies, he said.“But this felt different,” he added. More

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      What Do ‘Candyman’ and ‘Peter Pan & Wendy’ Have in Common? A Director Explains.

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      For the new Disney+ retelling, David Lowery drew on a range of unexpected influences, including the 1992 horror film, art-house classics and “Raising Arizona.”It was “E.T. the Extra-Terrestial” that turned David Lowery into a lifelong fan of “Peter Pan,” specifically the scene in which a mother reads the section about Tinkerbell’s possible death to her daughter while the friendly alien hides in the closet. “You just watch E.T. listening to that story, and it’s so emotionally resonant that it hooked me to ‘Peter Pan,’ no pun intended, more than any film version of it did early on,” Lowery said.For his second live-action retelling of a classic Disney film — following “Pete’s Dragon” (2016) — Lowery imagined his own variation on Neverland in “Peter Pan & Wendy,” with the young actors Alexander Molony and Ever Anderson in the title roles and Jude Law as the villainous Captain Hook. Initially, however, Lowery underestimated the task.“When I first took the job, I thought, ‘It’s Peter Pan, how hard could it be?’ It turned out to be the hardest but most exhilarating creative endeavor I’ve done to date,” he said. The difficulty, he thinks, stemmed from his desire to introduce a new shade to a fairy tale while honoring the story’s legacy.The original J.M. Barrie novel about Peter Pan and Wendy as well as the numerous film adaptations — Steven Spielberg’s “Hook,” P.J. Hogan’s “Peter Pan,” Joe Wright’s “Pan” and, of course, Disney’s 1953 animated rendering, among them — all swirled in Lowery’s mind as he reconsidered the boy who never grows up.Speaking during a recent video interview from Cologne, Germany, Lowery, 42, laid out some of the less obvious influences for his reimagining of “Peter Pan & Wendy,” now streaming on Disney+.Peter Pan’s Flight at DisneylandTo remain faithful to Disney’s take on “Peter Pan,” Lowery closely observed Peter Pan’s Flight, one of the original rides at Disneyland based on the 1953 film. The attraction, he said, “represents the movie distilled into a physical experience.” Although stunningly crafted, some the animated film’s defining iconography, most notably the image of Captain Hook straddling the jaws of the crocodile, has a greater impact on younger audiences when they see it immortalized in three dimensions in Peter Pan’s Flight.That the old-fashioned theatrical illusions the ride employs, like the use of forced perspective for London’s skyline, could still elicit wonder even in an age of digital effects, impressed him. Lowery rode Peter Pan’s Flight while preparing to shoot “Peter Pan & Wendy,” and hearing the excited reactions of children and adults alike reminded him of how beloved the animated version is. “Seeing this film condensed into a theme park ride, I realized the weight that these stories, as told by Disney, have in popular culture,” he said.‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’Lowery first watched the Steven Spielberg action adventure at the tender age of 7, and it immediately ignited his creative aspirations. “It’s a real kitchen-sink experience,” he said. “It’s a musical, it’s a drama, it’s a romance, it’s a horror film.” For the emotional approach to “Peter Pan & Wendy,” Lowery drew on the eclectic tone of “Temple of Doom” as well as its juvenile sense of humor.When creating the pirate hideout Skull Rock, Lowery tried to evoke the underground mines, in a cavernous space illuminated by lava, where the film’s Temple of Doom was located. “There’s also one shot in particular of Tiger Lily, the Lost Boys and Wendy looking down as John and Michael are about to be executed that is a direct homage to Indy, Willie Scott and Short Round looking down into the temple as the poor gentleman is about to be sacrificed to Kali,” Lowery explained.Andrei TarkovskyLowery sought to reconceptualize how Peter Pan and Tinkerbell are introduced to the Darling children. As he wrote the sequence in which Tinkerbell sprinkles Wendy with pixie dust, ostensibly to float her all the way to Neverland before she wakes up, the image of the sleeping woman levitating in the Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky’s surrealist “Mirror” (1975) came to mind. He added a screen grab of that moment to his look-book and then replicated it with Wendy.‘Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World’To differentiate his movie from traditional pirate films, including Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, Lowery looked to Peter Weir’s 2003 high-seas saga, which informed how he thought about Captain Hook and his crew. Instead of mere scoundrels, Lowery saw Captain Hook’s men as pirates playacting as soldiers and Hook himself as a decaying version of Captain Jack Aubrey (played by Russell Crowe in “Master and Commander”).“I thought, ‘What if Captain Hook at some point commandeered a Napoleonic vessel and executed all the other soldiers on board and he and his pirates took over this ship and he now thought of himself as an admiral on the HMS Bounty?” Lowery said. To help the actors, the director brought in consultants to teach them how to realistically operate a ship. One bit of unexpected synchronicity: John DeSantis, who plays Bill Jukes in Lowery’s fantasy, also appeared in Weir’s Oscar-winning film.‘Death in Venice’Since Captain Hook is horrified at the notion that he has grown up, Lowery introduced the idea that he dyes his hair. “He wants to maintain his youth as an affront to Peter,” Lowery explained. The inspiration came from Luchino Visconti’s “Death in Venice”: In the Italian director’s historical drama, an aging composer played by Dirk Bogarde colors his hair and wears makeup to appear younger. “At the end, when he’s on the beach, the hair dye just starts running down his face, exposing the deceit at the heart of Bogarde’s character,” Lowery said.Bill the Butcher and ‘Candyman’For Captain Hook’s image, Lowery drew from multiple sources. When he first pitched the project to the studio, he edited a hook for a hand onto a photo of a mustachioed Daniel Day-Lewis in 19th-century attire as Bill the Butcher in Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York.” “That became the Captain Hook I saw in my mind while I was writing the script,” he recalled.With the hook itself, Lowery wanted to stay away from the precise, shiny devices used in other adaptations, like Spielberg’s “Hook.” The one Jude Law would wield in “Peter Pan & Wendy” had to look like a less refined, “pugilistic instrument of violence.” Lowery gave the prop department an image of the actor Tony Todd in Bernard Rose’s 1992 horror film “Candyman,” about a ghostly killer with a hook for a missing hand. “We want it to be rusty,” Lowery added, “and to feel like it was a piece of metal that he pulled from the boat and had a blacksmith hammer into a barely usable form.”‘Raising Arizona’There’s a vivid montage near the end of Lowery’s movie that shows Wendy’s adult life. She overcomes nostalgia and embraces the potential that lies ahead. “I wanted to capture the idea that growing up could be a beautiful thing,” he said. The montage is an allusion to a sequence, known as “Dream of the Future,” in the offbeat Coen brothers comedy “Raising Arizona,” in particular the shot where the kidnapper H. I. McDunnough (played by Nicolas Cage) imagines himself and his wife in old age with their large family gathered around a table. “As someone who is still in the process of growing up, it’s really helpful for me, on a therapeutic level, to see a character look at the future with a sense of wonder and anticipation,” Lowery said. More

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      ‘Peter Pan & Wendy’ Review: A New Girl in Neverland

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      The filmmaker David Lowery updates the classic tale with his own pixie dust, saving what’s good and scuttling the rest.“Peter Pan & Wendy” is a case study in one of the agonies of growing up: the realization that some of the entertainment that tickled us as youngsters — as in the many troubling scenes in Walt Disney’s 1953 animated adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan novel, including the ditty “What Made the Red Man Red?” — have aged as gracefully as its lead character.The filmmaker David Lowery has opted to update it with his own pixie dust: save what’s good, scuttle the rest, and add plenty of spit and polish for a 21st-century shine.Seventy years ago, when Peter Pan whisked Wendy and her siblings to Neverland so she could mother his Lost Boys, he treated her like dirt and she swooned over his heroics. Now, Wendy (a compelling Ever Anderson) decks Peter Pan (Alexander Molony) and seizes the helm of her own story. “I don’t even know if I want to be a mother!” she protests.Lowery is a wise choice for a salvage attempt. He’s gifted at exploring the haunted corners of familiar tales (“Pete’s Dragon,” “The Green Knight”) and has revealed a morbid reverence for the passage of time — perfect for a story whose villain, Captain Hook (a scene-stealing Jude Law, hiding beneath artificial under-eye bags), is literally stalked by the ticktock of a clock.Having stripped out the questionable or merely dubious themes, he and his co-writer, Toby Halbrooks, are left with many minutes to fill. In addition to including a traumatic back story for Captain Hook, they add two lovely reveries on aging: a montage in which Wendy savors her youth and another where she’s tantalized by the prospect of growing up.The girl-powering of the plot means scrapping the catty mermaids, the glimmer of a love triangle with Tiger Lily (here played by Cree actress Alyssa Wapanatahk) and pretty much everything interesting that Tinkerbell (Yara Shahidi) once got to do, including her multiple attempts to murder Wendy. The fairy is now merely given a camera trick — Tinkervision — a blurred, jittery point of view that has its best moment when she flies through blood spatter.Lowery clearly adores the look of the cartoon. He and the cinematographer Bojan Bazelli pay it tribute with their use of moody skies, striking shadows, unexpected camera angles and a darkly beautiful color palette that shimmers like jewels in a cave. Still, these well-meaning choices struggle to cohere into a satisfying picture. Peter Pan comes across as a pest, and when Wendy belts the movie’s thesis — “This magic belongs to no boy!” — it hits the ear like a distracting clang.By the time the woolly pirates burst into their second rousing sea shanty (kudos to the song composer Curtis Glenn Heath), our minds begin to liken the Jolly Roger to the philosophical paradox of Theseus’s ship: How many planks can you swap out while still claiming it’s the real deal?Peter Pan & WendyRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      Disney’s Iger Returns to Familiar Stage, but With Different Challenges

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      The company reports quarterly earnings on Wednesday, and Wall Street is expecting it to lay out a new streaming strategy and operating structure.When it comes to reporting quarterly earnings, Robert A. Iger is an old pro. He has done it 58 times as Disney’s chief executive. But the next one, scheduled for Wednesday, will require him to give a performance for the corporate ages.“It has to be an impactful, meaningful, tone-setting, agenda-changing day,” said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson who has followed Disney for 18 years.Another veteran Disney analyst, Jessica Reif Ehrlich of BofA Securities, agreed. “I don’t know that we’re going to see answers to everything, but Iger’s overall messaging is going to be critical,” she said.So, no pressure.On Wednesday, Mr. Iger will publicly face Wall Street and Hollywood for the first time since he came out of retirement to retake the reins of a deeply troubled Disney. In late November, the Disney board fired Bob Chapek as chief executive and rehired Mr. Iger, 71, who ran the company from late 2005 to early 2020. He is also contending with Nelson Peltz, the corporate raider turned activist investor. Mr. Peltz, 80, whose Trian Partners has amassed roughly $1 billion in Disney stock and is fighting for a board seat for himself or his son, wants the world’s largest entertainment company to revamp its streaming business, refocus on profit growth, cut costs, reinstate its dividend and do a much better job at succession planning.Most of those things were in motion at Disney before Mr. Peltz started his proxy battle, and analysts expect Mr. Iger to provide updates on at least some fronts on Wednesday.More on the Walt Disney CompanyLabor Tensions: Unions that represent about 32,000 full-time workers at Disney World said that members had voted overwhelmingly to reject the company’s offer for a new five-year contract.Splash Mountain’s Closure: As Disney takes steps to erase the racist back story of the Walt Disney World ride, some are claiming to be selling water from the attraction online.Return to Office: Starting on March 1, the Walt Disney Company will require employees to report to the office four days a week, a relatively strict policy among large companies.Pricing Policies: After complaints by visitors about the costs at its domestic theme parks, Disney revised policies related to ticketing, hotel parking, ride photos and annual passes.How are the content pipelines to Disney’s streaming services (Disney+, Hulu and Disney+) going to be managed? At 6:30 a.m. on his first day back, Mr. Iger ousted Disney’s top streaming executive and ordered a restructuring of a restructuring that Mr. Chapek had put into place.For months, Disney has been talking about cost cutting and layoffs. Where are they? “This can’t drag on,” Ms. Ehrlich said. “It’s not good for company morale.” (Speaking of morale, some Disney employees have been circulating a petition to protest Mr. Iger’s decision last month to require everyone to report to the office four days a week.)Shareholders are increasingly worried about the decline of Disney’s traditional television business, which includes ABC and 15 cable networks, led by ESPN, Disney Channel, FX, Freeform and National Geographic. Disney’s cable portfolio has held up better than those owned by some rival companies (notably NBCUniversal), but Americans have been cutting the cable cord at an alarming pace — total hookups declined by a record 6.2 percent from October to December.“We need an honest and appropriate view of the future of Disney’s television business,” Mr. Nathanson said. “Is there an asset change? Does spending change? Under Chapek, the messaging was never very clear.”Even in decline, traditional television remains Disney’s largest business, delivering $8.5 billion in operating income in the fiscal year that ended in October.Disney and other old-line media companies are facing a simple equation that has proved astoundingly difficult to solve: Profit from traditional television is declining at a faster rate than streaming losses are moderating. In Disney’s case, traditional television earnings are expected to decline by $1.6 billion in 2023, while losses from streaming will abate by only about $900 million, according to Mr. Nathanson.In November, Disney said that losses from its streaming portfolio totaled $1.5 billion from July through September, compared with $630 million a year earlier.But Mr. Chapek, who led the company’s November earnings call, reiterated a promise that Disney+ would turn a profit by next October. Wall Street has been skeptical of that assertion, and Mr. Iger may revise it on Wednesday, along with guidance that Disney+ would have 215 million to 245 million global subscriptions by 2024. Disney+ currently has about 164 million worldwide.Companies always try to put the rosiest spin possible on numbers when talking to analysts, shareholders and the news media on quarterly earnings conference calls. But the upbeat tone struck by Mr. Chapek in the November session did not sit well given the numbers that Disney was reporting. Along with widening losses in streaming, Disney had disappointing profit margins at its theme park business and missed Wall Street’s overall expectations for both revenue and net income, a rarity for the company. (When one senior Disney executive privately told Mr. Chapek before the call that his planned remarks were too positive, he called her Eeyore, the gloomy donkey from “Winnie the Pooh.”)Mr. Iger will undoubtedly highlight some of Disney’s recent achievements. “Avatar: The Way of Water,” released by Walt Disney Studios, has generated $2.2 billion worldwide since it arrived in theaters on Dec. 16. Disney received more Oscar nominations last month (23) than any other company. Over the end-of-year holidays, Disney’s theme parks were gridlocked, easing fears about consumer belt-tightening.“Despite the macro headwinds, the parks still feel incredibly strong,” Ms. Ehrlich said.But Mr. Iger will also need to contend with a lackluster set of overall numbers, at least if analysts’ forecasts are correct. Analysts are expecting per-share earnings of about 79 cents from Disney, down from $1.06 for the same period a year ago, and revenue of $23.4 billion, up from $21.8 billion a year ago.Analysts polled by FactSet estimate that Disney+ will have 163 million subscribers, a slight erosion from the previous quarter.Mr. Iger will probably not directly address Mr. Peltz’s proxy battle, unless an analyst prods him about it. Disney has already made its position clear, saying in a Jan. 17 securities filing that Mr. Peltz had “no strategy, no operating initiatives, no new ideas and no plan.” In a fresh eruption late last week, Trian said there was an “urgent need” for Disney shareholders to drop Michael B.G. Froman from the company’s board and give the seat to Mr. Peltz or his son. In response, Disney aggressively defended Mr. Froman, a senior Mastercard executive and former U.S. trade representative who has been a Disney director since 2018.Some prominent analysts have taken Disney’s side.“He hasn’t made a good enough case for why he needs a seat on the board,” Mr. Nathanson said, referring to Mr. Peltz.Richard Greenfield, a founder of the LightShed Partners research firm, was one of Mr. Iger’s most ardent critics during his previous tenure at Disney — so much so that Mr. Iger blocked him on Twitter and refused to take questions from him on earnings calls. Mr. Greenfield, however, recently published an aggressive defense of Disney titled “Disney Would Be Wise to Keep Peltz Off the Jedi Council.”Perhaps Mr. Iger will take a question from Mr. Greenfield on Wednesday. More