Slashdot Mirror
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."
Just maybe we'll see about 10 thousand more star wars games, cause there aren't enough....
I wonder what the final company will be called? LucasEgo Intergalactic?
Hollywood.com's story
Bizjournal.com's story
Uemedia.com's story
Anyway, it IS going to (still) be called Lucasfilm Ltd.
Wait shit
Anyways Lucas will try anything and everything to make as much money off of something that he can, this has been proven on many occassions, what makes it so unsettling for slashdot readers is that _WE_ really enjoy the star wars films and we all go and see them. SEE the problem? We hate it, but we love it, ack capitalism vs. socialism.
Posting as AC because I'm too lazy to log in and I already an "Excellent"
George will likely seek the hand of Athina, the grand-daughter of Aristotle Onassis, now that she's turned 18 and inherited all that money.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
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.
Centralization breaks the internet.
Later, George was overheard muttering to himself:
"Truth, fiction...I'm the guy with the lightsaber. Fzoom!"
"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet [through rampant licensing] is insignificant next to the power of the Force."
Formula for cinematic infamy:
I had a sig, but
Maybe we could start calling it the Trade Federation, too.
your friends have failed.
Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational mega-corporation!
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.
---------------------
OnRoad: It gets you there and back again.
January 29th, 2003, AP Rumours of major re-organization in California today from Media Baron George Lucas' Lucasfilm company. Merging four distinct entertainment entities into one, this easily allows Lucas to command his armies of creative types into the future battlefield of the digital frontier. Also, in a related story, sales of white plastic one-size-fits-all suits has increased dramatically nation-wide.
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.
#define ROSE any_other_name
Thank you. I was quite unable to click the link myself.
... until a ship landed a few miles south of my house and unloaded a bunch of droids.
Dang George.. he's trying to build a monopoly and destroy other movie businesses! Darn him!
We must now start an open-movie force! We'll build movies for free, and all the scripts will be written (and sanity-checked) by students. We can include a free sound-crunching system and rendering farm. We'll call it ShowForge.. and we can have a solid business.. let's see.. Movix.. then we can have some of the Movix people drop out and call themselves the FMF (Free Movie Foundation).
Oo oo... and then we'll need a mascot. We'll take a Red Rhone Cow... (So no infriging on any possible movie system that Gateway could come up with), and we'll call 'em Mux!! Yeah.. that's the ticket. Then we'll make movies for free, with volunteer actors, and make movies a-plenty. Taco and Hemos in Rob & Jeff's Excellent Adventure!
Then we could make a Star Wars movie.. maybe call it Distro Wars! YEAH!
Ok.. now, I'll bet that 3rd Star Wars movie is sounding not-so-bad, eh? Hehehehe...
-What have you contributed lately?
Don't worry, the final Star Wars will most definitely not be any good.
Should'nt that be modded INFORMATIVE & not FUNNY?
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.
The more companies will slip through your fingers.
What signature defines me as a person?
I can't wait for the robotic Senator Amidala with realistic hand and mouth action...
I guess we're about to find out whether crap has a critical mass.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I was working for a cheap-ass closeout bookstore just north of Marin when Star Wars Episode II was coming out. A gentleman wearing a shitload of Lucas swag (jacket, shirt, hat) came in to the store with his family about a week before the movie came out.
I helped him find the book he was looking for (miracle of miracles, we had a copy), and I asked him if he worked at Lucas or just had friends/family there.
Turned out, he worked for LucasArts, and he had just come from a screening for employees of all of the Lucas companies. He said that it was worth seeing, but not really the best of the series.
Then there was a pause.
"You know what my next question is," I said.
"Yes. He's on screen for all of about five minutes, and they toned him down."
That was a fun experience, to get an honest appraisal of the movie before it came out and to find out the most important thing about the movie without even mentioning the "J-J-word".
ARKIN: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.
TAGGE: That's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?
TARKIN: The regional governors now have direct control over territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
"This company is now the ultimate power in the movie industry. I suggest we use it."
% jar jar ...
Illegal option: j
Usage: jar {ctxu}[vfm0M] [jar-file] [manifest-file] [-C dir] files
must... stay... awake...
From:
D =2 624
http://cgi.theforce.net/theforce/tfn.cgi?storyI
Gary Kurtz, the producer of ANH and ESB, spoke at the Sci-Fi Expo in Plano, TX this weekend along with his daughters Tiffany and Melissa (as children they played Jawas in ANH). He shared with the crowd about meeting Lucas, leaving the Star Wars films and the original plans for the entire saga.
.
.
.
EPISODE 1: Was to focus on the origins of the Jedi Knights and how they are initiated and trained
EPISODE 2: Introduction and development of Obi-Wan Kenobi
EPISODE 3: Introduction and life of Vader
EPISODE 4: There were seven different drafts of the film. At one point, they pursued buying the rights to Hidden Fortress because of the strong similarities. At one point, Luke was a female, Han was Luke's brother, Luke's father was the one in prison (interesting point for some debates) and the film featured 40 wookies
EPISODE 5: Once written, the screenplay of Empire is almost exactly what is seen on screen. The only cut scenes were those involving wampas in the rebel base (cut because of time and unsolved technical glitches) and about two minutes of Luke/Yoda Jedi training with no real dialog.
EPISODE 6: Leia was to be elected "Queen of her people" leaving her isolated. Han was to die. Luke confronted Vader and went on with his life alone. Leia was not to be Luke's sister.
EPISODE 7: Third trilogy was to focus on Luke's life as a Jedi, with very few details planned out.
EPISODE 8: Luke's sister (not Leia) appears from another part of the galaxy.
EPISODE 9: First appearance of the Emperor.
Take a look at the "mythical" 7, 8, and 9. They don't take place after the fall of the Empire. They basically drag out everything that happened in Jedi over 4 movies instead of one, killing Han in the process. Can you imagine EPISODE 7, an entire Star Wars movie devoted solely to Mark Hamill!?!?
From what I've read the reason why Kasdan left Jedi was because he wanted the episode 6 listed here instead of ending it at Jedi.
Whatever Lucas's mistakes, ending it at Jedi was an excellent move (and one that cost Lucas a great deal of money). Ending it at Jedi helped save the original Star Wars movies from dragging out and getting stale. Whatever you say about the new movies, if you wish you can essentially ignore them and just enjoy the great story told in the original 3.
Brian Ellenberger
...that 'Lucas Arts franchise dealership' you wanted is closer to a reality!
I didn't even bother going to Episode 2.
Uh oh, I can see my karma falling now. One of us will keep our "excellent" karma.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
RIAA down (again/still...thank bhudda) ----> crapflood....Lucas Arts plans more toys---->flood of crap.
./ shows no hope of ever having logical submission handling, so we're have to send a man to do the job...that's us!
See..only one Kevin Bacon away.
Keep these adhoc submittals coming.
... 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
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
I forgot where I grabbed this from, if anyone knows please reply...
25 Lines From Star Wars that can be improved if you substitute the word "Pants"
1. A tremor in the pants. The last time I felt this was in the presence of my old master.
2. You are unwise to lower your pants.
3. We've got to be able to get some reading on those pants, up or down.
4. She must have hidden the plans in her pants. Send a detachment down to retrieve them. See to it personally Commander.
5. These pants may not look like much, kid, but they've got it where it counts.
6. I find your lack of pants disturbing.
7. These pants contain the ultimate power in the Universe. I suggest we use it.
8. Han will have those pants down. We've got to give him more time!
9. General Veers, prepare your pants for a surface assault.
10. I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants back home.
11. TK-421. . . Why aren't you in your pants?
12. Lock the door. And hope they don't have pants.
13. Governor Tarkin. I recognized your foul pants when I was brought on board.
14. You look strong enough to pull the pants off of a Gundark.
15. Luke. . . Help me take...these pants off.
16. Great, Chewie, great. Always thinking with your pants.
17. That blast came from those pants. That thing's operational!
18. Don't worry. Chewie and I have gotten into a lot of pants more heavily guarded than this.
19. Maybe you'd like it back in your pants, your highness.
20. Your pants betray you. Your feelings for them are strong. Especially for your sister!
21. Jabba doesn't have time for smugglers who drop their pants at the first sign of an Imperial Cruiser.
22. Yeah, well short pants is better than no pants at all, Chewie.
23. Attention. This is Lando Calrissean. The Empire has taken control of my pants, I advise everyone to leave before more troops arrive.
24. I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants.
25. You came in those pants? You're braver than I thought.
Actually, Rogue Squadron and Rogue Leader were both good. So were Dark Forces, Jedi Knight and Jedi Knight II (though a good portion of the game was done by Raven, and not LucasArts).
The Starfleet Command series hasn't been that bad, and neither was the Elite Force game for the ST series.
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
If you'll look at the story again, you'll see that the article only referenced Apple by mentioning that it was "Apple CEO Steve Jobs" who bought the company. Apple has never owned Pixar or had any business relationship with it, other than sharing CEOs, unless I am badly mistaken. David
Actually, I really liked the Star Wars games before Episode I. Games like XWing and Tie Fighter are classics. Dark Forces and JKI were right up there too. I even liked the old console games (even though they were hard as heck). They were even willing to take a few risks. XWing vs. Tie Fighter was simply ahead of its time in being a primarily "Internet Only" game.
Around Episode I is when the games really started to suck. It was just too many games put together too quickly.
However, Lucasarts seems to be turning around with some help from companies like Raven and Bioware. Jedi Knight 2 deserves better than an honorable mention. It is in my opinion the best Star Wars game ever. It is the only game I have bothered playing through twice in many many years. It wasn't afraid to give you the full power of a Jedi in the name of presenting a "challenge". I am also looking forward to the upcoming Knights of the Old Republic RPG from Bioware.
Brian Ellenberger
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 $1 million corporations.
I'm just sayin'...
BFL
There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything.
--Doug Copland
That's my advice to George. He'd better work on getting some new creative properties going instead of spreading Star Wars around. That crap is wearing pretty thin.
Take away Star Wars and what has he got? Grim Fandango?
George Lucas merged four companies into a megacorporation? Shouldn't that be a quadcorporation? You don't often see a fusion of a million businesses into one corporate structure, unless you are talking about Enron subsidiaries.
Get your prefixes straight!
oooohhh...one company that has a monopoly over a certain sector, and is all powerful...
can i suggest "Lucassoft"????
if they ever went public, the symbol could be "LSFT"...fits perfectly...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
How will Lucas maintain control without the bureaucracy?
I'm sorry.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"Death Star Productions"
No, that'd be AT&T.
Will I retire or break 10K?
People are overlooking that GWL is building a brand new facility in San Francisco's Presido, which when completed (approx 2008) will house all his businesses, with the exception of Skywalker Sound (still at Skywalker Ranch) and LucasFilm, which is housed at a new facility just up the road from Skywalker Ranch. With all of his production busineses in one place, why have redundant HR or IT departments? Think of the benefits of having all your expertise centered in one spot, where they can easily advise and coordinate with each other.
GWL's a smart guy, and deserves the success he's achieved. I've worked for GWL, and let me tell you, it doesn't suck. Skywalker Ranch and Big Rock ranch are beautiful examples of what a work space can be. He puts his money where his mouth his, and when things goes well, he reaps the reward, and when things don't work out, he pays the tab.
Steve Jobs doesn't run Pixar the way he runs Apple.
And, in typical fashion, George Lucas takes credit for starting Pixar and then selling it to Steve Jobs.
IIRC, what really happened was that, in the early 1980s, all the people in the then-small ILM computer graphics department wanted to do full-length animated films using computer animation. Lucas, on the other hand, wanted ILM's CG department to supplement ILM's business as a VFX company for traditional films. They were able to reach an agreement where the guys in ILM's CG department would get to go out on their own, and in return they would hire and train their replacements, as well as giving ILM continued access to whatever technology they developed. Thus Pixar was formed.
In 1986(?), Steve Jobs acquired a controlling interest in the newly formed company. However, Pixar is John Lasseter's baby, and would most likely not have become so successful were it not for him.
On a side note, Lucas is a revisionist and a bit of a megalomaniac. I think that the new consolidation is an attempt to bring in the "wayward" companies (aka ILM). And while the LucasArts people might be glad about having better access to ILM's resources, I'll bet that the ILM people are none to pleased. I know I'd be pissed.