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Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm, Star Wars Episode 7 Due In 2015
Jason Levine writes "Disney will acquire Lucasfilm, including the Star Wars trilogy. Additionally, Star Wars: Episode 7 is due to be released in 2015, with more feature films on the way. George Lucas said, 'For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next. It's now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of filmmakers. I've always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime. I'm confident that with Lucasfilm under the leadership of Kathleen Kennedy, and having a new home within the Disney organization, Star Wars will certainly live on and flourish for many generations to come.'"
*checks date* ...Still October..
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
Noooooo!!!!
Disney/Marvel have Joss Whedon under contract through 2015. Just sayin'.
He passed on the role of director to Irvin Kershner for the second film. He should have never returned to directing. Or casting. Or screenwriting.
Two shops full of the best brains working under the same virtual roof. Might be interesting. Especially if we get writing/direction from someone other than George. Love ya, George, but hopefully the only wooden acting we'll see from now on will by Woody The Cowboy.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Ok I just flipped my opinion from "so what the Mayans are just issuing a calendar for the next year" to "oh noos signs of the apocalypse".
At least Lucas won't be in charge anymore.
Back in 1979 Disney produced a film called "The Black Hole". As a 10 year old I actually really liked the movie when I saw it back in the early 80s (on the newly-created Disney Channel of course), but it was considered one of Disney's biggest movie flops. It was pretty much a blatant rip-off of Star Wars, and was certainly an attempt to try and cash in on the huge popularity of Star Wars. The film had all the basic pieces - spaceships, laser guns, "ESP" kind of extrasensory stuff going on (aka The Force), and of course Robots.
So now, 33 years later, it looks like Disney finally got the real thing. The actual Star Wars franchise.
On a different note, I can't help but wonder if Lucas is in poor health. He always hated Hollywood, and despised studios having any control over his creative process. So for him to sell his own film company, which he built from scratch, to a major studio goes against everything he's said and done for decades.
Better known as 318230.
How can anyone not be pleased by this news? Any nerd I've ever interacted with had already written off any new Star Wars movies coming out of Lucasfilm. Even if the new movies are somehow worse than the prequel trilogy, it's not like we were expecting anything good. The only thing that could change my view of the franchise would be if Disney could breath some new life into it and make something worth watching.
Emperor is dead. Vader comes back from the Dark Side and also dies. Luke & Leia know they're siblings.
Seriously, what's the plot going to be?
Jar-Jar becomes a Jedi!
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
So does this mean we might finally get high-definition releases of the original Star Wars films without all of Lucas's later alterations?
I think the biggest problem with Disney getting their hands on Star Wars is the copyright issue. Lucas Film has always been really good about letting people parody Star Wars. There have been endless books, spoofs, homages and fan creations based around Star Wars. Disney is notorious for being dicks about, well everything, but definitely about copyright. If they take over Star Wars then I'm worried fan creations, spoofs and other expanded universe material will disappear under threat of legal action.
Yeah - Marvel was SUCH a bad buy for Disney, and horrible for Marvel...
5/7/2010 Disney Iron Man 2 $128,122,480
5/4/2012 Disney Marvel's The Avengers $207,438,708
Now that he's selling it, who cares what his original "vision" was for episodes 7 and beyond? Grand Admiral Thrawn is the obvious direction to take.
Let the wailing and gnashing of teeth begin! Then again, it couldn't be worse than episodes 1 and 2.
Oh yeah? Picture this: Luke Skywalker's son flying off to be trained in the ways of the force by an aging Jar-Jar Binks. After stopping on the way to pick up Chewbacca's son. On Life Day.
Bet that's the scariest thought you'll have this Halloween.
Star Wars 7: The Search for More Money!
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
For 35 years, George Lucas has permitted derivative fan-based works to thrive. He's a kid at heart who gains great personal pleasure from seeing so many people embrace his movies and characters.
Disney, on the other hand, is one of the ringleaders of the MPAA, pushing for crap like the DMCA and most noticeably the insane copyright extensions. They're infamous for cracking down on anyone who so much as fingerpaints mouse-ears on a poster of Obama without first licensing said use of mouse-ears. Under a Disney regime, I expect to see any post that so much as mentions a "light saber" as takedown fodder.
As far as extending the franchise, do you really want to watch "The Littlest Sith" or "Sleeping Jedi", or some other straight-to-DVD animated dreck?
John
In the same way that people who copy movies are 'Pirates', Disney is a 'child molester'.
Screw the later ones. Redo!
Episode I: Directed by J.J. Abrams
Episode II: Directed by Christopher Nolan
Episode III: Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Now watch Dark Horse Comics, which has had the Star Wars comics license for ages, producing some of the best "extended universe" material in the franchise, helping to maintain the fanbase during the dark time between RotJ and TPM... get screwed out of it, because Disney has its own comics publisher (Marvel). That's what happened with Boom Comics, which was developing a rather good line of comics featuring Disney-owned characters, but lost it when Disney bought Marvel. In both cases, good small independent publishers got screwed by The Mouse.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Episode IV: Directed by Quentin Tarantino.
"That's not a moon....that's a mother fuckin space station!"