Newsflash! Disney buys out LucasFilm

[Mike DiCenso]

What it says on the tin. This is being reported by several credible news sites. Here's the articles from IGN and Fox News:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/10/30/ ... a67800008d

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/20 ... p=features

Sources report the possibility of Star Wars Episode VII could be filmed and released by 2015. This has very staggering implications for the Versus debate, as well as the direction of the Star Wars franchise as a whole.
-Mike

[Khas]

Ya know, this is kinda scary, considering back in '07, I predicted that Disney would end up buying both Star Trek and Star Wars, and then produce something along the lines of TFC, only Disney-fied.

I get scared when my predictions come true.

[watchdog]

Just saw this;
http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=771595

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A decade after George Lucas said "Star Wars" was finished on the big screen, a new trilogy is destined for theaters, since The Walt Disney Co. announced Tuesday that it was buying Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4.05 billion.

The seventh movie, with a working title of "Episode 7," is set for release in 2015. Episodes 8 and 9 will follow. The new trilogy will carry the story of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia beyond "Return of the Jedi," the third film released and the sixth in the saga. After that, Disney plans a new "Star Wars" movie every two or three years. Lucas will serve as the creative consultant for the new movies.

"For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see 'Star Wars' passed from one generation to the next," said Lucas, chairman and CEO of Lucasfilm Ltd. "It's now time for me to pass 'Star Wars' on to a new generation of filmmakers. I've always believed that 'Star Wars' could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime."

Disney CEO Bob Iger said Lucasfilm had already developed an extensive story line on the next trilogy and that "Episode 7" was now in early-stage development.

The Walt Disney Co. announced the blockbuster agreement to buy Lucasfilm in cash and stock Tuesday. The deal includes Lucasfilm's prized high-tech production companies, Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound, as well as rights to the "Indiana Jones" franchise.

Lucas was hailed as a cinematic visionary when the original "Star Wars" came out in 1977. But he had become an object of often-vicious ridicule by the time he released 3-D versions of all six films in the "Star Wars" franchise earlier this year.

Die-hard "Star War" fans had been vilifying Lucas for years, convinced that he had become a commercial sell-out and had compounded his sins by desecrating the heroic tale that he originally sought to tell. They railed against him for adding grating characters such as Jar Jar Binks in the second trilogy and attacked him for tinkering with the original trilogy, too. Any revision -- from little things like making the Ewoks blink or bigger alterations like making a green-skinned alien named Greedo take the first shot at Han Solo in a famous bar scene -- were treated as blasphemy.

The criticism grated on Lucas, who vowed never to make another "Star Wars" movie during an interview with The New York Times earlier this year.

"Why would I make any more when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?" Lucas told the Times.

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," the fourth film in another lucrative franchise, subjected Lucas to even more barbs when it came to the big screen in 2008. Fans of those films were especially outraged about an opening scene that featured Indiana Jones crawling into a lead-lined refrigerator to survive a nuclear bomb blasting.

Lucas, 68, was fed up by the time he released "Red Tails," a movie depicting the valor of African-American pilots during World War II, earlier this year. He told the Times he was ready to retire from the business of making blockbusters and return to his roots as a student at USC's film school, where he once made a movie about clouds moving in a desert.

Kathleen Kennedy, the current co-chairman of Lucasfilm, will become the division's president and report to Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn. She will serve as executive producer for the new movies.

In a video posted on YouTube, Lucas said the decision to continue with the saga wasn't inconsistent with past statements.

"I always said I wasn't going to do any more and that's true, because I'm not going to do any more, but that doesn't mean I'm unwilling to turn it over to Kathy to do more," Lucas said.

He said he has given Kennedy his story lines and other ideas, "and I have complete confidence that she's going to take them and make great movies."

Kennedy added that she and Lucas had discussed ideas with a couple of writers about the future movies and said Lucas would continue to have a key advisory role. "My Yoda has to be there," she said.

In a statement, Iger said the acquisition is a great fit and will help preserve and grow the "Star Wars" franchise.

"The last 'Star Wars' movie release was 2005's 'Revenge of the Sith,' and we believe there's substantial pent-up demand," Iger said.

The deal brings Lucasfilm under the Disney banner with other brands, including Pixar, Marvel, ESPN and ABC, all companies that Disney has acquired over the years. A former weatherman who rose through the ranks of ABC, Iger has orchestrated some of the company's biggest acquisitions, including the $7.4 billion purchase of animated movie studio Pixar in 2006 and the $4.2 billion acquisition of comic book giant Marvel in 2009.

I honestly dont know what to think about this, but I'm willing to bet it will shut down the EU.

[User1663]

Too late, the ICS conspiracy is already in too deep. It'll show X-wings blasting chunks out of moons.

[sonofccn]

I have a bad feeling about this...hopefully I'm wrong but yeah.

[watchdog]

Well, some of the folks at SDN were hoping for a filmed Thrawn trilogy, some hope that Disney will use parts of the EU. More than likely, the EU will be completely ignored by Disney.

[Trinoya]

To quote another post.


Begun... the canon wars have.

[Mike DiCenso]

On that note, a separate topic on the canon implications of this should probably be started in the Evidence section.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Well, some of the folks at SDN were hoping for a filmed Thrawn trilogy, some hope that Disney will use parts of the EU. More than likely, the EU will be completely ignored by Disney.

Assuming he doesn't die of old age before then, Lucas in his role as consultant will probably require they use other ideas for a movie story, namely his own. And based on some of the articles and quotes I've seen so far, Lucas apparently turned over to Kathy Kennedy a whole bunch of notes and story ideas to her, so it's probably a sure bet at this point that little or no EU will be used.

But a Thrawn Trilogy adaptation would require that the cast be rebooted, as would the majority of EU material since Hamill, Ford, and Fisher are way too old to play their roles at this point.
-Mike

[mojo]

jesus, can you imagine a trilogy based on the new jedi order series, or more appropriately given the ages of the original cast, legacy of the force?

i know it's going to be crap, but i can't help but think what COULD happen..

[SpacePaladin]

jesus, can you imagine a trilogy based on the new jedi order series,

I would pay money just to watch Han Solo's Imperial Superweapons speech from Destiny's Way.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Well, if they make it far into the future, they can always bring back Mark Hamill and his own personal Jedi guild, at last.

.... at least it's far more honest from GL. He was literally out of touch with his own creation, unable to deliver anything exciting.
Now...


At least Disney doesn't believe the world will end in 2012.

To quote another post.
Begun... the canon wars have.

You don't say!
"with George Lucas serving as creative consultant", he's now out of the loop, so you can pretty much shelf everything he said.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Oh and no Journal of the Whills.

The fat has vanquished art.

[Praeothmin]

Too late, the ICS conspiracy is already in too deep. It'll show X-wings blasting chunks out of moons.

Or will do as AotC did, and show us very sub-ICS firepower for SW, as the movies always have... :)

[Mr. Oragahn]

I've been thinking if the following theory might hold some truth:

Perhaps after being approached by several large studios interested in joint ventures or complete acquisitions, or simply because he was fed up of Star Wars, George Lucas got motivated into making the prequels and TCWS only to increase the stock value of his own companies, before selling them at the right price.
Now, for the prequels, it may be pushing it, but let's not pretend that Disney's decision to acquire Lucasfilm was taken yesterday. If Lucas was truly motivated by telling a meaningful story, even through TCWS, he would not relinquish all creative control to be reduced to a mere creative consultant of his own universe.

Mind you, I'm not worried about pushing this theory that far as to claim that even the prequels were part of his financial sellout plan.
I never took him seriously when he pretended he couldn't make the prequels until now because of major technological limitations: if anyone remembers movies like Blade Runner, Dune, Return to the Future and Total Recall, you'd know he was just talking BS. Especially when it came from the same guy who made the movie industry advance so much, who pioneered many techniques and had his studio produce one of the best space battles ever, if not the only one to surpass them all.
The prequels would have been less of an orgy of visual special effects, contrary to that mount of CGI shoved in your face. Everything that is present in the prequels could have already been made, especially shots of Coruscant. Even dynamic shots dammit. How the fuck can he pretend he couldn't render Coruscant when he has already shot two movies which had major engagements, some even at high speed, happening both in orbit and close to the surface of moon sized supercities floating in space??
Or how shooting large clone legions could be a problem?
He already made Empire Strikes Back, which had plenty of explosions, saturated with lasers and even a sort of nuclear explosion complete with flash, a sequence so good that people still laud it as one of the most beautiful sequences ever decades later.
The movie Spartacus (1960) with Kirk Douglas already had lines of soldiers shot from a distance and the studio didn't go bankrupt on this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgywD3XJaWU
Futuristic (weird) battle? Dune (1984):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUP2vEKsdn8#t=2h00m42s
Lava world? Star Trek, Search for Spock (1984):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS4s3XXNLiE

And of course matte paintings, plenty of them.
Lucas already had everything he needed for his "vision" back in the 80s. Everything.

People often objected to Lucas' new works and pointed out that he had lost the spark. That he was just going down the lazy route, where the movies and books were purely produced for the money and nothing else.
Perhaps we simply never considered how close to a truism this idea was. :)