Quest for Planet X (2023), Lucasfilm Press

A new rumor claims that Lucasfilm’s publishing and media initiative, Star Wars: The High Republic, is “coming to an end.”

Star Wars: The High Republic Character Encyclopedia (2023), DK

This new rumor comes from scooper WDW Pro during the Pro Show livestream.

WDW Pro stated, “According to our sources, the High Republic is coming to an end. The people that we are talking to are saying to us that it is looking like Disney is ready to pull the plug on The High Republic.

“And The Acolyte being canceled is just the beginning of that, but it is also the catalyst of it,” he added.

(L-R): Osha Aniseya (Amandla Stenberg) and the Stranger in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

Next, Pro stated, “So basically, for years, Disney has been building towards putting The High Republic on the small screen and then the big screen eventually. And so they had the roll out of the young adult novels which did not very well. They were on the New York Times best seller’s list. By the way that doesn’t mean any thing because you can basically pay your way on there. So New York Times that’s my opinion and I’m keeping it. Disagree if you like, it’s subjective.”

“But things did not go well for The High Republic,” he continued. “We’ve documented that over the years quite significantly. Barnes & Noble, for example, was putting The High Republic novels on the floor. … They were actually putting The High Republic novels on the floor because that let them put Timothy Zahn books on the shelves. I guess those would sell. And so they had to have The High Republic in that space contractually, but on the floor they went.”

“So Disney had this build up and the build up was leading to The Acolyte,” Pro shared. “And what happened? Well, viewership was absolutely terrible. So now with all of that having been built up to this small screen adventure there’s no reason to continue with the venture of doing more adventures with The High Republic. Not when it is utterly unsuccessful and has no merchandising power either.”

(L-R): The Stranger and Osha Aniseya (Amandla Stenberg) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

“Now, here’s going to be the tricky part about it,” he said. “According to the source we are not going to get an announcement that The High Republic is being ended by Disney because that would be a black eye. Again, we’re in rumor territory, but according to the source we will see that this gets phased out over the next one to two years.”

“And basically the way this is going to play is that High Republic books and comics and whatever else they do, they are going to clear the deck by having those items that were already paid for, and budgeted, and they’re in production, and whatnot they’re going to keep going with those and that’s it. They’re going to stop it after that. And again the reason is because there is simply no future for this,” he concluded.

Star Wars: Light of the Jedi (2021), Random House Worlds

WDW Pro previously claimed that Star Wars: The High Republic was winding down last August. He noted, “Disney/Lucasfilm Press is apparently being given orders from Disney, not from Lucasfilm, but Disney proper that it is time to wind down The High Republic and it is time to wind down young adult novel releases.”

He continued, “I don’t know exactly what that means. I don’t know if that means that immediately The High Republic will cease to get releases. That Phase III is the final phase for this push that they’ve had. It has been completely unsuccessful in about every way you can imagine.”

“We are told, by the way, folks, that the latest issue of The High Republic, and I don’t know exactly what that is, but we’re told that that issue has only moved about 60,000 units total, which is just terrible for Star Wars,” WDW Pro added.

Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures — Saber for Hire (2024), Dark Horse Comics

It has been reported that The High Republic publishing sales were struggling. Novelists Michael Gallagher and Declan Finn shared on their Upstream Reviews Substack that the publishing initiative saw a “90%  – 95% drop in sales between the launch with Light of the Jedi and the current High Republic novels in barely over two years.”

The duo also shared, “Since Disney’s takeover of the property, only four books have broken 100,000 copies in sales besides the aforementioned Light of the Jedi; three of them were written by Zahn. The fifth and final was the first Chuck Wendig novel, whose sales wibbled and wobbled their way into a ditch with the following books.”

Furthermore, they noted Zahn’s numbers were far surpassing The High Republic’s books, “The five of them have easily outsold every High Republic novel, and the sixth is only outsold by Light of the Jedi.”

Heir to the Empire (2021), Random House Worlds

What do you make of this rumor?