Toxic Fandom: How Hollywood Is Battling Fans Who Are ‘Just Out For Blood’ — From Social Media Boot Camps to Superfan Focus Groups
variety.comAdam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer On Aug. 28, Amandla Stenberg, the lead of the “Star Wars” series “The Acolyte,” posted an eight-and-a-half-minute video to her Instagram Stories about Lucasfilm’s abrupt decision not to pick up the show for a second season just a month after the Season 1 finale streamed on Disney+. “It’s not a huge shock for me,” Stenberg said.
Since the series was announced in 2020, she continued, “we started experiencing a rampage of, I would say, hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudice, hatred and hateful language towards us.” (Stenberg was unavailable to comment for this story.) In other words, “The Acolyte” was the latest high-profile target of “toxic fandom,” the catchall term for when fan criticism curdles from good-faith dissatisfaction into a relentlessly negative, often bigoted online campaign against either the project or its stars or creative leaders.
In a franchise economy increasingly dependent upon established audience devotion to drive the bottom line, the threat of toxic fandoms poisoning that enthusiasm has become a seemingly intractable headache for almost every studio.
And it’s only getting worse. “It comes with the territory, but it’s gotten incredibly loud in the last couple years,” says a veteran marketing executive at a major studio. “People are just out for blood, regardless.
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