Hello Disney lovers, friends, and even enemies; it’s time for another Disney news roundup in which we’ll catch you up to speed with the latest happenings in the House of Mouse. While news is relatively quiet on the DeSantis front today, Disney’s trading card game Lorcana is facing some legal controversy of its own before the game has even been released. In the latest entertainment news, Variety’s Actors on Actors invited two Star Wars prequel stars for a chat about their respective journeys toward joining the Star Wars family, while an upcoming Disney film’s projected box office numbers spell bad news for the mouse’s reputation and continue a worrying trend.
When a company is as big as Disney, every day brings with it a variety of new developments. So sit back, relax, and grab a snack (perhaps you can peruse Disney World’s newly released holiday item menu while dreaming of a holiday trip) while we dive in.
Disney’s Lorcana developer is facing a lawsuit from a rival trading card company
Ravensburger, the company helping to create the new Lorcana trading card game is being sued by Upper Deck, which alleges designer Ryan Miller took plans from a similar game designed for Upper Deck and is using them for Lorcana. According to Upper Deck, the new Disney game is “nearly identical” to a game Miller worked on while under contract with them titled Rush of Ikorr, which has yet to be released. According to the complaint, Miller was first invited to a 2018 Gaming Summit in order to help brainstorm ideas for a new trading card game, and by 2019, he was under contract as Rush of Ikorr‘s lead game designer until 2020. During that time, he helped develop the game, where features Ancient Greek and Mesoamerican Gods.
Lorcana is scheduled to debut in August at this year’s Gen Con convention, but that release could be in jeopardy as Upper Deck is calling for an injunction that, if granted, would halt the game’s release. The Disney TCG will allow players to summon different Disney characters from its various franchises, with a format Upper Deck believes to be too close to Rush of Ikorr to be a coincidence. According to the rival trading card company, the games’ rules, mechanics, and even duration of gameplay are similar. In a statement shared with Polygon, Ravensburger says it has yet to be served with the complaint, so maybe the game will see the light of day after all?
Andor star Diego Luna gets candid with fellow Star Wars alum Hayden Christensen
In a conversation with Hayden Christensen, Diego Luna shared how secretive his Star Wars audition process was and how he originally couldn’t see himself playing a character in that universe (which is wild to this Rogue One fan; Luna is the only one I can ever see playing Cassian Andor). Unlike previous auditions, the casting process for Rogue One took several months and when Luna first met with the director, Gareth Edwards, he wasn’t even sure what he was meeting him for.
“I remember it was the first time such secrecy happened around anything I was going to be a part of. I was asked by my agent to be in L.A. to meet someone for something, that couldn’t be said on the phone.”
The two talked for hours about the story’s concept and characters, and by the end of conversation Edwards was convinced he wanted Luna for the part. Luna’s breakout role in the 2001 film Y tu mamá también had grabbed the director’s attention, but the actor wasn’t as sure.
“Gareth (Edwards) explained to me the whole film, and he said at the end, ‘I would really like you to play this role.’ I said to him, ‘But I don’t see myself here. I love these films, but how do I fit here? No one has my accent. I’ve never thought this could be possible.’ He (Gareth Edwards) basically said, ‘Since I saw Y tu mamá también, I thought you could be great for a role like this. I want that kind of tone in the film. I want that realism, that feeling that it’s everyday life.’”
It’s hard to imagine a world where Diego Luna didn’t end up playing Andor. Rogue One is personally my favorite Star Wars film and a lot of that love is for the diverse cast of characters in the film. I’m glad Luna (and his accent) made it into that galaxy far, far away and will happily watch him in the final season of Andor next year.
A new Disney movie continues a befuddling trend for the House of Mouse and looks set to flop in the box office
It wasn’t that long ago that a Disney and Pixar release would have us running to the closest movie theater, but those days feel further away than ever, and it doesn’t seem like Elemental is going to be the film to change that. Ahead of its official theatrical release on June 15, the film is projected to make somewhere between $28 million and $38 million during its first three days in theaters. For a Disney film that cost roughly $200 million to make, those are some concerning numbers. Live-action films like The Little Mermaid should be big box office draws but after a $118 million opening weekend, the film’s revenue dropped to only $41 million the following weekend, which doesn’t bode well for the Mouse’s reputation of being a box-office draw.
While I can’t point to a lack of promotion as the reason The Little Mermaid is under-performing, that might be the case with Elemental, which seems to continue a trend I can’t for the life of me understand. A recent string of Disney films and shows, like Strange World, which lost roughly $100 million due to poor ticket sales, or American Born Chinese, a critically-acclaimed show made up of Academy-Award winners in main roles, are just not being promoted how they used to be. If I hadn’t seen Across the Spider-Verse in theaters, I likely wouldn’t even know about Elemental‘s upcoming release as there’s so little marketing for the film. Though given Elemental‘s poor critical reception, it’s not a given that heavy marketing could save the film from theoretically flopping in the first place. Hopefully the success of films like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Avatar: The Way of Water inspires Disney to invest in making good films and also market them.