George Lucas Consolidates his Empire

Shadowcat writes "George Lucas is consolidating his galaxy, merging LucasArts, Lucas Digital (ILM & Skywalker Sound), Lucas Licensing, and Lucasfilm into one mega-corporation to provide a single place to create all sorts of media. You can find the article on SF Chronicle Site."

Comments

jar jar

[banka]

does this mean SOMEONE will now figure out that we hate Jar Jar??

More efficient this way...

[kakos]

I doubt this will change the fact that the third Star Wars will probably suck.

I always wondered why Lucas didn't do this before. He had all these disparate companies that did different things. It seems like he could do things a lot more efficiently if they combined everything into one mega-studio.

Re:More efficient this way...

[mshultz]

Well, that's possible, but the efficiency and competitiveness argument doesn't seem all that logical to me- recently, the successful players have been Pixar et al., who are small, dynamic, and adaptable. Also, is their ultimate goal really efficiency, or is it to create the best product? (or greatest profit...) "Efficient" production of movies/games/whatever could probably lead to less inventiveness and ingenuity on a personal level. This seems like the kind of move that could lower worker morale enough to result in lesser products...Just my thoughts.

Re:More efficient this way...

[The Only Druid]

There's also a parallel to be drawn to Sony (as discussed by the recent WiReD article, and as linked to here on /.) that keeping cooporating companies seperated (like the Lucas* units were) in order to prevent mutually exclusive or mutually confusing goals.

Consider the artists at LucasArts who worked independently from LucasFilm and SkywalkerSound. While they may often have reason to work together, some people might find it easier (if they're from, say, Dreamworks) to work with ILM if its not attached directly to LucasFilm.

The Stock Market Shuffle

[On Lawn]

Is it me or do companies split off and merge at stock market whims? A companies stock goes up for merging, the all merge. When one company makes money from spinning off, they all start spinning off companies.

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OnRoad: It gets you there and back again.

Re:The Stock Market Shuffle

[KKin8or]

Is it me or do companies split off and merge at stock market whims? A companies stock goes up for merging, the all merge. When one company makes money from spinning off, they all start spinning off companies.

That may be true, but in this case, not so much so. According to the article, Lucasfilm is privately held, so doesn't have a stock price tracked on the market and millions of stockholders to make happy. They're not doing this to raise stock prices, because its stock isn't publicly traded. They're doing it so that all the companies can share resources without stepping on each others' toes as much. So if the games people want a bit of CG footage from a movie, they won't have to go through as much red tape, because it's already owned by their company. Or if they want to bring in the lead designer for a movie's special effects to talk to game artists, it'll be much easier. This might translate into more profits, but has nothing to do with stock price.

Big Ego!

[ollie_ob]

He is one egocentric guy, naming almost all those companies after himself...

I personally liked the name 'Industrial Light and Magic' (ILM) - it sounds pretty cool.

Re:What's the point?

[rmohr02]

Lucas owns all four of these companies, and is consolidating them so that groups that were part of different corporations can now work together more efficiently.

Re:Just maybe

[reaper20]

And in typical LucasArts fashion, only two of them would be good. Only Star Trek has had worse games. XWing and Tie Fighter (honorable mention to JK2) are the only good star wars games ....

*stares at his Star Wars - Masters of Teras Kasi*

Shit, I'd settle for remakes of the older games ....

Consolidate? .. consult them on...

[Anonymous Coward]

How not to screw up episode III. I think Lucas should step aside as director and give that task to someone who knows what they're doing. Ever since American Graffiti has Lucas ever directed anything sensibly? (Not even Star Wars).

not at all off-topic

[djupedal]

RIAA down (again/still...thank bhudda) ----> crapflood....Lucas Arts plans more toys---->flood of crap.

See..only one Kevin Bacon away.

Keep these adhoc submittals coming. ./ shows no hope of ever having logical submission handling, so we're have to send a man to do the job...that's us!

George Lucas Inc....

[Suchetha]

... You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.. we must be cautious"

But hell, no matter what i gotta give him props what must be one of the greatest space fantasies i have seen (episodes iv - vi anyway)

Suchetha

I doubt this will help Lucas

[DavidinAla]

To be honest, if I were a competitor of one of Lucas' companies, I would be happy to see this consolidation, assuming that they're truly going to put one management team in charge of the whole thing. Here's why.

1) As independent operations, each of those companies has a clear focus. The management team at the sound company knows that its goal is to provide the best sound work possible in order to get business from other production companies making films. The video game unit is focusing on making money on its games. The ILM people are focused on effects and selling those effects to other studios. From a business point of view, combining will tend to make those units lose focus, because they're now going to be looking at what the new "big boss" wants instead of focusing on individual goals. See Al Ries' book, "Focus," for a good discussion of why focus is essential to a company. (Actually, see almost any of the work from Ries and Jack Trout for more support of this point, going back to their work in the '70s on positioning.)

2) This is going to potentially create sales problems for the divisions that sell to other movie studios. As it has been, a studio that bought its special effects from ILM was dealing with a specialist company, NOT a competing studio. ILM's specialist competitors are now going to be saying (to other studios), "Why would you want to use LucasFilm? They're your competitor." You might say that it was that way already, but there's a very real difference when you're dealing with a company with a different name and different management team. If a studio is angry at LucasFilm for some action that it's taken in one area, they'll hold it against the whole company since they'll be one combined operation.

I know this is being pitched as something to streamline operations and reasons like that, but I would bet that the original idea originated with the bean counters for reasons involving taxes or other accounting reasons. My bet is that the decision was made for accounting reasons and is being sold as something to help operations.

I honestly don't see any operational advantage and I see multiple disadvantages. It will be interesting to see how the combined company does in the future (as compared to how its doing in its current structure), but since the numbers are private, we might never know.

David

Shorter Credits

[bigfatlamer]

So does this mean that Ep. III will have credits that don't last as long as the film itself since all the CGI, model and other work will be done "in house?" I thought that shit was never going to end in Ep. II (the credits...not the movie).

On a more serious note, this isn't really that surprising. 3-7 years ago, everyone and their dog was doing the diversification thing. Spin off divisions into completely separate companies that have "licensing agreements" with the parent company that allow for sweetheart deals that bulk up both company's "earnings" without any money actually changing hands.

In light of the current spotlight on corporate buttfuckery, now all these companies are bringing these spin off corps back in-house and making like nothing ever happened.

It doesn't hurt that Commandant GW Bush wants to make it so that the bigger your corporation is the less taxes you have to pay so that one $3 billion (annual revenue) corporation will pay about 1/4 the taxes of 3000 $1 million corporations.

I'm just sayin'...

BFL

Diversification, not consolidation

[Comrade Pikachu]

That's my advice to George. He'd better work on getting some new creative properties going instead of spreading Star Wars around. That crap is wearing pretty thin.

Take away Star Wars and what has he got? Grim Fandango?

Re:Star Wars games went down with Episode I....

[Ninja Master Gara]

X-Wing vs Tie Fighter needs remaking. With the poly counts and quality of current cards, truly galactic conflicts are possible. And with a little UI copying from people who've done it successfully, commanding a wing of fighters could be done better than ever. X-Wing vs Tie Fighter: Red Leader Tactical. Yum.