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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."
I wonder what the final company will be called? LucasEgo Intergalactic?
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"
Centralization breaks the internet.
"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!
Thank you. I was quite unable to click the link myself.
I can't wait for the robotic Senator Amidala with realistic hand and mouth action...
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.
"Stumble before you crawl"
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".
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.
He did do this before. When I started at LFL in 1986, it was all one company.
The reasons I read in the paper today for consolidation were exactly the same reasons they gave in about 1989 to separate.
Oh, well...
% 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.
.
.
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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
... 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
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