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George Lucas to Resurrect Dead Movie Stars?
According to his director friend Mel Smith, George Lucas has a plan for upcoming movies more insidious than a whole Gungan cast. Smith says Lucas is buying the rights to old movies in order to put dead actors in his films. He says, "George has been buying up the film rights to dead actors in the hope of using computer trickery to put them all together, so you'd have Orson Welles and Barbara Stanwyck alongside today's stars." Even if Smith is lying, it makes you wonder who long it will be until Hollywood starts to recycle actors as well as scripts.
If Orson Welles doesn't crawl out of his grave and strangle this arrogant, money-grubbing motherfucker with his own intestines, then at least we finally know that the dead are *truly* and *forever* gone.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Interviewer: Mr. Lucas, fifteen years ago you made Episode III and a lot of people thought you were done with cinema. ...
Lucas: That's right, I had found that children appreciated my advanced work far more than any adult so I was doing a lot of Cartoon Network programs after that.
Interviewer: So what caused you to return to the silver screen?
Lucas: Well, I was sitting at my ranch watching some old Akira Kurosawa films -- looking for some plot or scene I had missed that I could possibly turn into a Star Wars movie -- and I got up to retrieve another sandwich from my Carl's Jr. dispenser in my living room. The machine was several treacherous feet away from the couch and as I got up, my snuggie caught on the ottoman made of hate mail and death threats. Well, I fell and a disc slipped in my spine.
Interviewer: That's right you were in the hospital for several months.
Lucas: Yes, and as I lay there calling for help in serious pain, an apparition of Ed Wood appeared to me. 'Use the cash, Lucas' he said. And I immediately understood that I had primarily ruined careers of living people when today there were whole sloughs of dead actors whose careers I could ruin with advanced computer technology.
Interviewer: Ah, yes, so at that point
Lucas: I started buying the film rights to a lot of dead actors and actresses.
Interviewer: Which led to Katherine Hepburn playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars Holiday Special II last year.
Lucas: That's right, as well as Bela Lugosi having a classic lightsaber fight with Charlie Chaplin.
Interviewer: Well, I think it's clear how you maintain such a hated profile.
Lucas: Well, you know, I try. I try. And I often remind my adopted children that they're what keeps me going. Even though at times it's hard, I can look into my son's eyes and he'll say with so much emotion, "Stop dad, just please stop, people don't want this. Please, please stop." And that keeps me going.
My work here is dung.
Will the same technology work with porn? What am I saying... That was probably the original intention.
an adaptation of Frankenstein would seem appropriate.
I am officially gone from
Don't we have plenty of dead actors nowadays on our screens already ? Aren't people like Keanu Reeves (or Hayden Christensen, fergossakes) lifeless enough for you ?
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Like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P6EuhSNbGk
Or this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFh1X0pZSM8
Harrison Ford filed to protect his likeness so someone couldn't use it after he passed away.
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Total shit webcomics are never obligatory.
Learn it. Know it. Obey it.
I don't know if this counts, but I'd pay $5 for a movie involving a resurrected JarJar Binks and the guy from Temple of Doom who rips out beating hearts.
Who's with me!?
Hello?
Well maybe, but it's been done before with Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and Zelig not to mention Fred Astaire's posthumous commercial for the Dirt Devil (at 3m02s).
It'd be interesting to see the end product but I'm certain it will cause nothing for grief for various estates despite any good intentions.
I seem to remember a movie by Carl Reiner and Steve Martin back when I was a kid where they did this.
The film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow featured Laurence Olivier, 15 years after his real life death, in the role of the villain, Dr. Totenkopf, using previously recorded archival footage.
How long until actors start selling their voice & likeness at different ages? Of course the MPAA will lobby to extend copyright even longer.
Stallone aged 35.. that'll be $12million.
Theres a sale on DeNiro at 40 this week only $2m.
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Like Warner Brothers forking over big bucks on the unproved Wachowski brothers to make the Matrix?
Or Nolan making Inception?
There are good original movies. I just skip the crappy remakes and vote with my wallet to go see movies like Inception instead.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Remember all the outrage over colorizing Casablanca in the 1980s? There were even congressional hearings that warned of the dire consequences of unmitigated technology (someone even imagined at the time dead actors being re-inserted in new movies, unthinkable at the time). Sounds crazy....
I read this story ages ago. It won the first Hugo award for best novelette. "The Darfsteller" tells of a time when actors sell their likeness and are replaced by robots (apparently, Keanu Reeves did this early in his career).
George Lucas must've dusted off his copy of this story and said, "Hey, I can do this!"
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
That comment is so rife with irony...
I guess I need to say something interesting in order to keep myself from getting modded down.
In regards to the story posted and Eldavo's comments - no I don't think George has been ruining acting Careers. He merely takes the whole talent pool from an entire set of actors and imbues it into a SINGLE actor or actress in every trilogy. In the original, it was Harrison Ford. In this latest one, its Natalie Portman. You MIGHT be able to argue that Hayden Christensen is another one - but I actually think he's some sort of anomoly that was immune to this process, he didn't get any better or worse. But seriously, Ford and Portman seemed to be the only ones who have managed to successfully LAUNCH their careers into the higher echelons of Hollywood, who can now demand millions for being on set.
So - here's what I'm hoping. George takes a bunch of Dead Actors and Actresses. They're already famous, and George will put them along side someone we haven't seen before on film. If my understanding of Osmosis is correct - George won't be able to take the skill of 1 actor and spread it throughout the Dead Actors. Dead people can't GET any better at acting, unless they are playing the role of zombie. No, I think more appropriately, George will make all the dead actors SUCK - like it will be really painful to watch and you'll wish it was just the Star Wars Holiday Special. But somehow, this one live actor he has in the film, will manage to escape with the power of multiple famous dead actors and actresses, producing another celebrity for people everywhere to fantisize about while not doing what they are supposed to be doing.
Just out of curiosity, is the rage more from "reviving" dead actors, or Lucas doing so?
Pretty sure I know the answer already, but feel like asking anyway.
For me, it's "in general". George Burns is a great actor and comedian, but he's passed. The thought that we're going to pull a Weekend At Bernie's for a quick buck strikes me as deeply disrespectful. Owning their "likeness" strikes me as a bit cheesy too - I'm pretty sure the intention wasn't to let Elvis' estate start making new movies.
Sadly, it won't even come to that. What'll happen is that the new "standard movie star contract" will include some fine print giving the studios the rights to the actor's likeness at that point. The actor'll get paid for one cheap movie, and then the studio will keep them in movies for free for all eternity.
with Tron, grafting a younger looking Jeff Bridges face unto another actor.
So why not for porn? You could have anyone you want in your porn movie.... and make it look even more realistic.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101207/ap_en_ot/us_tron_digitally_young_3
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has an entertaining bit about traveling back in time to 1978 and beating Lucas to death with a shovel. This is just adding fuel to the 'build a time machine' fire.