How Disney+ Uses Star Wars to Dominate Digital Entertainment

Disney The Mandalorian with Baby Yoda

Disney’s new streaming service Disney+ recently completed its first full year in 2020, earning a massive 86.8 million subscribers since its debut. Much of this popularity is attributed to Disney+’s original content—particularly its breakout hit, The Mandalorian. An offshoot of Disney’s Star Wars franchise, the show follows the titular bounty hunter and his alien charge Grogu (aka “Baby Yoda”) as they travel to alien worlds, battling monsters, defending innocents, and generally getting into trouble.

What’s most impressive, however, is the fact that Disney+ earned its enormous viewing audience with a budget of only $1.5 to $1.75 billion for content in 2020. This is in sharp contrast to Netflix, which spent $16 billion on original content in 2020, yet currently only has 195.15 million subscribers since its streaming service began in 2007.

How did Disney+ acquire nearly half the number of Netflix’s subscribers in a fraction of the time that it took for Netflix to build a similar viewership? While some may attribute Disney’s success to cute mascots, the nostalgia market, or random luck, the truth is, Disney+ uses a highly effective strategy to ensure the success of its streaming service and Star Wars franchise—and one that can be successfully used by other companies.

By establishing their Star Wars universe across multiple storytelling platforms, Disney has laid the groundwork for a lucrative Star Wars franchise built for the digital age—using a strategy known as transmedia storytelling.

What is Transmedia Storytelling?

Transmedia storytelling is the practice of telling a large narrative using multiple media platforms, including movies, television shows, comic books, novels, video games, mobile apps, and more. Each of these platforms allows storytellers to offer standalone stories that are part of a greater fictional universe, allowing storytellers to expand on character backstories or add new details to story worlds.

This grants audiences multiple entry points to learn about—and become emotionally invested in—the transmedia story universe. This also motivates them to engage with other fans on social media, engage with story creators, and even add new content to the narrative. As more audiences become familiar with and invested in the narrative, the story’s brand grows stronger, making it easier to successfully market new content.

How Disney Uses Transmedia Storytelling in its Star Wars Franchise

Disney The Mandalorian flying with Baby Yoda Star Wars

As a franchise that’s been around since 1977, Star Wars has already built a detailed story universe told through movies, novels, comic books, toys, and other media platforms in its merchandising empire. Since being acquired by Disney, the universe has expanded to include additional content, including a sequel film trilogy, digital series, and games, each covering new storylines.

All of these content pieces are being combined to create a massive new transmedia story universe according to Jeff Gomez, CEO of transmedia production company Starlight Runner Entertainment. Gomez, whose company helps other businesses create and promote their own transmedia story worlds, is quick to point out that successful transmedia storytelling requires one to have a clear vision of how each story piece fits into the greater whole.

“Transmedia is not telling the same story on different media platforms,” he stresses—pointing out that simply repeating a single story as a movie, novel, or game is a form of cross-media marketing. “A sequel or prequel movie, or even a cinematic universe is not transmedia, simply because the universe is being conveyed through a single media platform. The current Star Wars universe is transmedia because Lucasfilm is telling an array of official (canonical) stories in movies, through streaming on Disney+, in novels, comics, animated shorts on YouTube, even in video games.”

Thus, while Disney’s The Mandalorian is telling its own story, it does not exist in a vacuum and increases audience excitement (and media coverage) by referencing other aspects of the Star Wars universe. Audiences see live action versions of animated characters like fan favorite Ahsoka Tano from Star Wars: The Clone Wars interact with the Mandalorian—while still continuing storylines from their own shows. They hear references to events like “Operation Cinder” which took place in the Star Wars Battlefront II video game, and feel validated for having played the game.

All of this makes Star Wars’ transmedia story universe more immersive and entices even casual viewers to learn more about this fictional universe through movies, games, and other marketable content.

Disney Transmedia Storytelling Mandalorian with Boba Fett Star Wars

Transmedia storytelling can even be done through platforms not usually thought of as storytelling mediums. Disney’s new Galaxy’s Edge attraction at Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios enables longtime and new Star Wars fans to immerse themselves in a large-scale simulation of Batuu, a new planet in the canonical Star Wars universe featured in novels and comics. There, they interact with cast members playing Stormtroopers and Jedi, each acting out their own storylines.

Guests can even use a Disney Parks Mobile App to transform their smartphones into “datapads” that translate the alien language signs in the attraction, decrypt communication signals, and scan objects. They can take on “jobs” for both good and bad Star Wars characters by scanning props for cargo or delivering messages—and receive digital rewards like galactic credits and star maps. All this interaction makes these potentially new fans an active part of the greater Star Wars transmedia narrative.

Even clothing merchandise can be part of transmedia storytelling—although once again, Gomez emphasizes that transmedia apparel needs to have a powerful link to the greater narrative. The popular fangirl fashion company Her Universe (founded by Ashley Eckstein, the voice actress of Star Wars’ Ahsoka Tano), often uses symbols, signs, and character abstractions on their Star Wars apparel, signaling their interest to other fans without making the brand obvious. While the company does sell traditional T-shirts with Star Wars logos, it also offers a “Rocklove Star Wars Medal of Yavin,” (referencing the famous “Battle of Yavin” medals from Episode IV: A New Hope) and Darth Vader face masks.

“These are products and apparel designed to make some iconography or minutia from these worlds look cool,” explains Gomez. “They reflect the code of the universe you love in tandem with helping you express your love for it.”

Is Transmedia Storytelling the Future of Storytelling in the Digital Age?

Of course, in order to get audiences emotionally invested in any story, storytellers still need to master traditional techniques. That means learning from classics like The Iliad and becoming familiar with story structures such as Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey (something George Lucas studied extensively to create the original Star Wars trilogy). And while this structure does evolve with modern sensibilities, classic stories continue to inform current tales—as evidenced by The Mandalorian’s regular use of western and samurai story motifs.

But as the digital age makes it easier to stream entertainment and engage with audiences, transmedia storytelling becomes much more relevant to the success of the entertainment industry.

“Today we have access to a myriad of technology and media,” states Gomez. “We’re in control, so you, the storyteller, need to show up. You need to give me something new or I’m going to move onto something else.”

By creating immersive transmedia universes capable of telling riveting stories across multiple platforms, storytellers give themselves a powerful vehicle to regularly engage with their audiences. As transmedia storytelling helps to inform not just a single story but hundreds of new stories set in the same fictional space, stories become easier to create and share—resulting in a more lucrative investment.

Disney Star Wars The Mandalorian Baby Yoda in Cradle

Quantity aside, well-crafted transmedia storytelling offers multiple psychological triggers designed to turn new audiences into long-term fans who will connect with the content on multiple platforms. Gomez offers several reasons for how transmedia content like The Mandalorian is uniquely profitable for the digital age:

  • Fan engagement: Each episode of The Mandalorian is filled with references to other Star Wars storylines in movies, novels, and animated shows. This encourages fans to speculate between episodes on how these callbacks will inform the series moving forward. By sharing their ideas on social media, these fans keep interest in the show—and Star Wars—at a regular high.
  • Revitalized content: The films and animated shows referenced in The Mandalorian are available on Disney+ for old and new fans to rediscover. “Fans have scrambled to study the Mandalorian episodes of Star Wars: Clone Wars and Rebels,” observes Gomez. “They are studying links between the series plot and sequel trilogy. This makes Disney money!”
  • Unified fan base: While the Star Wars sequel trilogy proved polarizing for fans, the transmedia elements of The Mandalorian offer common ground for fans. Gomez notes how the show’s references to multiple storylines acknowledges Star Wars film enthusiasts, animation fans, and fans of George Lucas’ old Extended Star Wars Universe (aspects of which have been re-canonized into Disney’s Star Wars Universe). This creates greater incentive for fans to continue consuming Star Wars content.  

Crafting Effective Transmedia Story Universes

Given its ability to engage with fans across multiple platforms (and make money through various media content), transmedia storytelling is an undeniably powerful strategy for staying relevant in the digital age.

That said, while Disney has created wildly successful transmedia storytelling universes with Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, other studios such as Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures franchises have struggled to achieve similar success with the DC Extended Universe and the Dark Universe. In future posts, we’ll examine why such a disparity exists and how companies can employ highly effective story worlds by leveraging transmedia techniques. This holds not only for entertainment properties but also for big brands. Subscribe to my blog to be notified of new articles, and be sure to share this article using the links below.

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This is the first installment in a transmedia storytelling series being written in tandem with Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner Entertainment, one of the industry’s foremost transmedia producers. Starlight Runner consults with multiple companies from Disney to Sony to Coca-Cola to help establish their story worlds and produces transmedia content including graphic novels, videos, books, animated series, and web sites. Learn how your company can use them to produce your own full transmedia story world through narrative design, content production, licensing, merchandising, and fan cultivation. And be sure to follow this blog to receive additional articles in this series directly to your email.

The Transmedia Storytelling Series:

#1: How Disney+ Uses Star Wars to Dominate Digital Entertainment

#2: Ultraman: Translating a Multi-Billion Dollar Japanese Superhero Franchise for American Media

#3: Disney Marvel vs Warner Bros. DC: How Do Shared Universes Succeed or Fail?

#4: Your Shared Universe on a Budget: What The Blair Witch Project and Video Palace Teach Indie Filmmakers 

 

Michael Jung is a freelance writer for hire with a keen interest in pop culture, education, nonprofit organizations, and unusual side hustles. His work has been featured in Screen Rant, ASU Now, and Free Arts. When not writing, you can find him entertaining kids as Spider-Man and encouraging them to embrace their inner superhero. Please contact him for his freelance writing services.