New Lucasfilm Campus Breaks Ground at Presidio

GuyMannDude writes "Lucasfilm has broken ground on the new $300 million special effects campus that he hopes will help San Francisco rival Hollywood as a producer of movie magic. Some see the project as a way for the Presidio (a national park) to become economically self-sufficient while critics claim that level of commercialization is unnecessary."

Comments

Star Wars games

[syr]

Hopefully the Lucas compound will be able to use the close connections to create better products all around. Lucasarts has produced some great games over the years but the teams have always had a hard time dealing with NDA agreements with the other Lucas companies and tailoring a specific game to an upcoming movie release.

With everything in one boat maybe future titles will improve upon titles such as Bounty Hunter which surely could have been much better if the process was streamlined better internally.

Story is everything

[xeniten]

I'd rather see Lucas break ground on a writer's workshop.

Hollywood == Competition?

[Clan Hanna]

Perhaps it's just my jaded and cynical view of recent movies, but it seems that this new San Francisco-based studio wouldn't really have to do a great deal to rival Hollywood as a great movie producing town. Sure, Hollywood has the name, and has a long and glorious history, but the really good, honestly-worth-seeing films of the last few years have come out of other countries, not Hollywood. LOTR is just one example one that immediately pops to mind. Star Wars of course was done in England (and Marin, CA, of course). Lest anyone forget, The Matrix was an Aussie production. A personaly favorite of mine, The Boondock Saints was East-Coast, USA made. My list here is short for the point of brevity, not due to a lack of examples.

The last really good Hollywood production I saw was The Score. Hollywood may have a name synnonymous with movie making, but ? at least recently ? not so synnonymous with good movie making.