Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Word has come down that Disney is going to buy Lucasfilm (along with all it's various subsidiary companies) for a little over $4 billion. George Lucas is retiring - he's named Kathleen Kennedy as the new president of Lucasfilm and brand manager of the Star Wars franchise, and he'll remain on board as a creative consultant.
Along with this news, Disney and Lucasfilm have also announced that they are planning to make the oft-rumored Episodes VII - IX of Star Wars, with Ep. VII being readied for a 2015 release and then a new Star Wars movie following every 2-3 years.
All of this could be excellent news. Disney has shown that it knows how to let movie creators do their thing successfully in the Marvel and Pixar lines of films - so they may very well be equally ready to let Lucasfilm make movie magic with new Star Wars films. And getting George Lucas out of the driver's seat should have been done three or four movies ago - he's an great idea guy, but at best a mediocre script writer and director. Most critics and fans agree that it's no coincidence that the best movie in the Star Wars series, The Empire Strikes Back, was written by an actual writers (Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan) from Lucas' story treatment, and then directed by award-winning Irvin Kershner. So this is a move that could possibly breath new life into the movie franchise, in much the same way that Timothy Zahn and some of the better authors in the Star Wars novels Expanded Universe have kept that part of the franchise alive and kicking (despite the horrendous and often poorly-planned multi-book series that have done their best to sink the novel range over the last decade or so.)
Or we could get the Star Wars version of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Making more Star Wars movies could very well be an unashamed cash grab on the part of Disney and Lucas (who will surely be getting some sort of royalties - after all, this is the guy who negotiated to retain all merchandising rights in his contract for the first Star Wars film, and then went on to develop a profit-generating empire based on that merchandising - a fairly novel idea for the late 1970's, and one which made him enough money that he was able to finance the subsequent movies himself, only relying on Fox to provide distribution to theaters.) Because after all, the first few movies will turn a massive profit even if they suck - Episode I: The Phantom Menace is reviled by most hardcore fans but still generated over $1 billion in ticket sales worldwide.
Only time will tell if Star Wars will regain its former theatrical glory - or whimper off into the shadows of the Land of Pre/Sequels that never should have been made...
