A Disturbance in the Force: Documentary about the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special gets a release date

Last Updated on November 22, 2023

It’s the holiday season. Not only is it the time of year for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but also Life Day! What’s Life Day, you may ask? Well, it’s the most important holiday on Chewbacca’s Wookie home planet, according to the Star Wars Holiday Special. The infamous Christmas variety hour was a particularly early misfire to capitalize on the newfound phenomena of Star Wars after its release in 1977. The special got the cast to reprise their roles for this TV presentation. However, Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie would only make brief appearances as the show was marred by a dominant Wookie storyline without subtitles or translation, plus strange variety show performances.

It’s a popular culture mystery that most fans would love to hear the story behind, and luckily, a documentary about the holiday special is on the way. A Disturbance in the Force comes from the production company, September Club. Giant Pictures is distributing the documentary and has secured a release date just in time for Christmas. A Disturbance in the Force will be released on digital and Blu-ray on December 5, while it has a limited theater release in the U.S., U.K. and Australia just ahead of its home entertainment debut.

According to Variety, the synopsis outlines, “A Disturbance in the Force chronicles the making of the bizarre Star Wars Holiday Special that aired 45 years ago and never surfaced again. For some context, Star Wars was released in theaters in 1977 and became a cultural phenomenon. A year later, filmmaker George Lucas was talked into cashing in on the craze by producing a holiday-themed variety special. Plenty of people (approximately 13 million) tuned in when CBS aired Star Wars Holiday Special during the week of Thanksgiving. The only problem? It became a famously terrible two hours of television, never to be shown again.”

Our own Chris Bumbray got to review the doc from Fantasia, and he would state, “A Disturbance in the Force does a great job explaining just how the whole thing came together… As the movie does a good job illustrating, the Star Wars Holiday Special is bad, but it’s not even close to the worst variety show from the era… The documentary acknowledges the weird place the Holiday Special has in the current Star Wars canon.”