Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Disney+ Series To Get Over $20 Million In Tax Credits
At this year’s Star Wars Celebration, Lucasfilm announced a brand new series for Disney+ called “Skeleton Crew”, which is being created by Jon Watts and Chris Ford.
“Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, the series will centre around a group of children lost in space, and be set in the “Ahsoka/The Mandalorian” time frame.
Jon Watts revealed at the event that “It’s the story of their journey trying to find their way home,” Watts said. But he also conveyed one important aspect of the series. “It stars four kids, but it is not a kids show.”
The new series is going to star Jude Law and will debut on Disney+ in 2023. Recently, the Hollywood Reporter, has revealed that the series is one of seven new shows that have been given a share of $90.8 million in tax incentives for shooting in California.
Disney’s Lucasfilm was awarded $20.9 million in tax credits. Other studios were also awarded some of that tax credit, including HBO ($30 million), Warner Bros. Discovery ($19.7 million), Netflix ($14 million) and NBC Universal ($6.2 million).
“Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” is forecasted to account for the largest qualified spend of the seven series, with nearly $136 million in expenditures during its first season.
California Film Commission Executive Director Colleen Bell said in a statement:
“Increased investment in our tax credit program strengthens California’s ability to compete and continue building on our status as the world’s media production capital. We are, once again, welcoming new TV series into the program, which creates jobs and economic opportunity here in the Golden State.”
One of the reasons why the government is paying this tax break, is because that $90.8 million will, across the seven projects, including “Skeleton Crew”, will employ an estimated 1,953 crew, 545 cast and 21,691 background actors/stand-ins during production. So it brings in lots of jobs and, ultimately, taxes for the area.
Hopefully, at the upcoming Lucasfilm presentation at the D23 Expo in September, we will find out more details on “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew”.
Roger Palmer
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Note that the $136 million is in qualified expenditures (in the state of California) to obtain the full tax credit, the budget for the first season of Skeleton Crew will be much higher (unqualified expenditures in CA, expenditures outside of CA, contingency allocation, etc.)