Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens

[Drunk Monk]

Disney to Buy Lucasfilm for $4.05 Billion; New 'Star Wars' Movie Set for 2015
12:54 PM PDT 10/30/2012 by Alex Ben Block

Bob Iger George Lucas Signing Paperwork - H 2012
Disney/ABC Television Group
UPDATED: Kathleen Kennedy, current co-chair of Lucasfilm, will become Lucasfilm's president, reporting to Walt Disney Studios chair Alan Horn as part of stock and cash transaction; company plans new Star Wars films every 2-3 years, a series on Disney XD, and theme park growth.

The Walt Disney Co. has acquired Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in cash and stock and announced a new Star Wars movie to be released in 2015.
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Kathleen Kennedy, current co-chair of Lucasfilm, will become Lucasfilm's president, reporting to Walt Disney Studios chair Alan Horn as part of the stock and cash transaction. Disney is paying approximately half the price in cash and will issue 40 million shares of stock, the company said Tuesday in a statement.

Kennedy will serve as executive producer on new Star Wars feature films, with the franchise's creator and Lucasfilm founder George Lucas, 68, serving as creative consultant. There are plans to release a new Star Wars film every two or three years.

“For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next,” said Lucas, chairman and CEO of Lucasfilm, in a statement. “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. Disney’s reach and experience give Lucasfilm the opportunity to blaze new trails in film, television, interactive media, theme parks, live entertainment and consumer products.”

The deal comes on the heels of Disney's 2009 acquisition of Marvel Entertainment and its 2006 purchase of Pixar Animation Studios, two potent entertainment brands that appeal to families. The Disney board has approved the Lucasfilm acquisition, but it is subject to antitrust scrutiny by the U.S. government.

While Lucas and Disney have had a long relationship, it has been most visible at the company's theme parks, where Star Tours and other attractions have been popular for more than two decades.

However, the Stars Wars movies have been distributed through Twentieth Century Fox, which will now be cut out of future Star Wars and other related business. (Though Fox already has been set to release 3D versions of the past Star Wars movies, it is unclear if that relationship will be impacted by the sale. The acquisition also raises questions about the future of Stars Wars: Clone Wars, a highly popular series on Cartoon Network, which is owned by a Disney competitor, Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner.)

Disney also is acquiring Lucasfilm’s hugely profitable consumer products and merchandising businesses, which should be a good fit for the buyer.

“Lucasfilm reflects the extraordinary passion, vision and storytelling of its founder, George Lucas,” said Bob Iger, Disney chairman and CEO, in a statement. “This transaction combines a world-class portfolio of content including Star Wars, one of the greatest family entertainment franchises of all time, with Disney’s unique and unparalleled creativity across multiple platforms, businesses and markets to generate sustained growth and drive significant long-term value.”

In a call with investors, Iger said the first new Star Wars movie is targeted for 2015 and that the company planned for another movie every two to three years after that. Disney releases eight to 10 pictures per year, including one from Pixar and up to two from Marvel Studios. The plan is for a Star Wars movie in one of those tentpole slots.

Iger told investors that Star Wars is a perfect proerty for TV, particularly for the company's young male-skewing network Disney XD, and plans to expand the franchise's presence in its theme parks.

In addition, while Star Wars merchandise has been a big business, that business has mostly been domestic, Iger said. Using Marvel as a model, Disney plans to grow international marketing of Star Wars products by increasing the brand's presence in their stores, with more toys and with with other products.

Just this June, Kennedy was named co-chair of Lucasfilm alongside Lucas, whose said then his role at the company would be phased out. The producer and seven-time Oscar nominee is a frequent Steven Spielberg collaborator whose credits include E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), Jurassic Park (1993), Schindler’s List (1993), The Sixth Sense (1999) and Nov. 16 release Lincoln.

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[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

It is to be titled "When Jar Jar met Mickey"

[El Dingo]

Meh.

Lucas has been in 'bed' with Disney since 'Captain Eo' and 'Star Tours'. Disneyland/world gift shops have been filled with 'Star Wars' stuff for years.

If this makes the next 'Kingdom Hearts' game that much cooler then I'm all for it.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Look, an auction of almost all the Star Wars action figures: Star Wars Auction

[Drunk Monk]

ABC to look at 'Star Wars' live-action TV series
by James Hibberd
Tags: News

Comments 7
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star-wars-1313.jpg

ABC entertainment president Paul Lee says he’s going to take a look at the long-gestating Star Wars live-action TV series now that the Disney deal to acquire Lucasfilm is complete.

“We’d love to do something with Lucasfilm, we’re not sure what yet,” Lee exclusively told EW. “We haven’t even sat down with them. We’re going to look at [the live-action series], we’re going to look at all of them, and see what’s right. We weren’t able to discuss this with them until [the acquisition] closed and it just closed. It’s definitely going to be part of the conversation.”

Even many working in Hollywood don’t realize a live-action Star Wars TV series has been sitting on the shelf the past few years. The project was commissioned by longtime Lucasfilm producer Rick McCallum, who enlisted writers such as Battlestar Galactica‘s Ron Moore and swore them to NDA secrecy on the plot details (more on the show’s storyline below). Fifty scripts were written. McCallum once called the scripts the most “provocative, bold and daring material that we’ve ever done.”

And then … nothing.

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The scripts gathered dust, the scope of the production and the extent of the show’s necessary visual effects deemed too expensive for a broadcast or cable network. The president of one premium cable outlet told me last summer the project just didn’t make any financial sense. The closest comparison was HBO’s lavish Game of Thrones. But that deal gave HBO control of a major chunk of the Thrones empire, including DVD and international distribution which significantly offset the show’s high production cost. The Star Wars show was budgeted at more than $5 million per episode and Lucasfilm wanted to retain ownership.

But now Disney has purchased Lucasfilm for $4 billion and Disney owns more than a couple TV networks. The financials for a big-budget TV show are more compelling if the license fee and other income sources stay in the family. Already one Star Wars-related project is in the works for kids network Disney XD. Cartoon Network’s popular and innovative animated title The Clone Wars will likely shift to XD after its current deal expires. Could the live-action show finally see the light of day too? It’s a tricky question because a new Star Wars film is planned for 2015. Cautious brand managers are sometimes reluctant to have a live-action TV show on the air when producing live-action films — such as Warner Bros. putting the kibosh on any Batman TV projects while making Christopher Nolan’s trilogy.

Lee said he wasn’t sure if the project was still viable. “It’s going to be very much up to the Lucasfilm brands how they want to play it,” he said. “We got to a point here with Marvel, a very special point, where we’re in the Marvel universe, and very relevantly so, but we’re not doing The Avengers. But S.H.I.E.L.D. is part of The Avengers. So maybe something oblique is the way to [approach the Star Wars universe] rather than going straight head-on at it.”

Sources say the live-action series centers on the story of rival families struggling over the control of the seedy underside of the Star Wars universe and the people who live within the subterranean level and air shafts of the metropolis planet Coruscant (the Empire’s urban-sprawl-covered home planet). A bounty hunter may be the main character. Set between the original Star Wars film trilogy and the prequels, the time period allows for all sorts of potential appearances from classic figures from the Star Wars universe.

Extensive art work including character designs, costume designs, and set designs were all developed by a top team of concept artists and designers who worked for more than a year on the third floor design studio at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch’s main house on the project. The team was closely supervised by McCallum and Lucas.

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, it might be because this roughly matches the description of the upcoming Star Wars videogame 1313. In fact, sources say story materials and the designs for the TV project were used to help make the game. So if you want to see what the TV show was supposed to look like, check out art from 1313 (one example above). This creative strip-mining could arguably help the TV show’s chances — it’s not like Hollywood has been shy about doing crossovers between videogames and films before.

Can you imagine that ultra-hypothetical ABC Sunday-night lineup? Once Upon a Time, Star Wars: 1313 and S.H.I.E.L.D?

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[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Lucas has always said there would be a live action TV series. They already have the scripts in place. the biggest problem was the cost.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Didn't we think we know all there was to know about the original trilogy?

Darth Vader is the quintessential sci-fi villain now. His voice, his clothes, that helmet ... everything about him is iconic. But apparently, George Lucas had an entirely different actor (and concept) in mind that would have made Star Wars remarkably different.

It's a well known fact that Lucas was heavily influenced by filmmaker Akira Kurosawa when crafting his space opera. Slightly less known was that Lucas was interested in casting one of Kurosawa's favorite actors, Toshiro Mifune, in the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

But what we didn't know, is that Mifune wasn't only up for the role of Kenobi. In fact, according to Mifune's daughter, Mika Mifune, Lucas was so desperate to have Toshiro on board that he offered him the role of Darth Vader. In fact, the Vader helmet was supposedly designed with Toshiro in mind, save for one important detail—there would have been no mask.

While Tohiro Mifune ultimately declined because he thought the film was for kids, we're still left with so many quesitons. How else would the film have changed if he'd said yes? Could Mark Hamill have been cast with his blonde locks as the part of Luke Skywalker? And if he was, would we have lost the incredible twist of Vader being Skywalker's father?

We'd love to see the alternate universe where that film got made, but we probably wouldn't want to live there. How about you?

[Drunk Monk]

I'd like to see more on the source of that info.

Meanwhile...

Today at 1:45 PM
Zack Snyder Is Developing a Star Wars Film Outside the New Trilogy
By Claude Brodesser-Akner

Back in November, the Los Angeles Times reported that Man of Steel and 300 director Zack Snyder said he had no interest in directing the hotly anticipated seventh Star Wars film. But Vulture has learned that while this may be specifically true — he won’t be doing Episode VII — it was a bit of misdirection: He is in fact developing a Star Wars project for Lucasfilm that is set within the series’ galaxy, though parallel to the next trilogy. It will be an as-yet-untitled Jedi epic loosely based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai, with the ronin and katana being replaced by the Force-wielding knights and their iconic lightsabers. (Go ahead, say it — you know you want to: “ … an elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.” Felt good, didn’t it?)

It’s not clear just where Snyder’s untitled Jedi film would fall within the Star Wars chronology, but one insider expects it will not be considered part of the “numbered” episodes, but rather a stand-alone film set sometime post–Episode VI events, meaning the next phase of the franchise development is much broader than previously thought. For those unfamiliar, Kurosawa’s influential Seven Samurai (The Magnificent Seven was the American remake) tells the tale of a small agrarian town in sixteenth-century Japan that’s routinely pillaged by bandits. Fed up with the annual shakedown, its farmers retain the services of seven masterless samurai to defend their harvest. One of the film's stars, Toshiro Mifune, was initially offered the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi (as Kotaku recounts here). George Lucas has cited the classic as one of his favorites, telling the Telegraph in 2005 that “it’s a brilliant, brilliant film, and every time I see it I can't believe the magic mixture of a great story and great acting and humour and action and suspense — wonderful cinema. The art of moving pictures is on every frame of this movie.”

In late October of last year, when Disney CEO Bob Iger first announced the acquisition of Lucasfilm, he’d stated that after Episode VII, “our long term plan is to release a new Star Wars feature film every two to three years.” Our sources also say that Snyder’s would start production after Disney starts on its planned 2015 release of Star Wars: Episode VII, and while no director has yet been set for Episode VII, clearly things are taking shape at Lucasfilm. (A spokesperson for Lucasfilm declined comment.)

In the meantime, we are left to ponder the obvious geek questions: Do Snyder’s Jedi carry just a single lightsaber or a long one and a short one, like samurai do? Oh God, why do you torture us so!?

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[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

It will have to wait until I am done learning Mandarin.

But I guess Mika Mifune said it on a Japanese game show last week.

Mika Mifune revealed this interesting behind-the-scenes tidbit last weekend on the world history game show, "Sekai Fushigi Hakken!" Vader's now-iconic helmet was apparently designed with her father in mind, and if he had accepted the role, his face would've been at least somewhat visible.

[thatguy]

loosely based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai

Oh, so they're going to remake

[youtube]ksJTPdNNQB4[/youtube]

--tg

[Drunk Monk]

Come over to the KFM forum sometime: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=64710&page=3">http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/s ... 710&page=3</a><!-- m -->

You don't know the power of the dark side!

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

I thought Star Trek people and Star Wars people were at odds with each other, like the Hatfields and the McCoys. Yet the man who directed the last two Star Trek movies will be doing the next Star Wars movie. What a puzzlement.

[Drunk Monk]

I loved what J.J. did with Star Trek and was a huge Alias fan. His MI3 installment was mediocre, but that's the only place where he disappointed me.


You are easy puzzled, huh?

[Drunk Monk]

a lot of SW buzz. been tracking it on KFM: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=64710&page=3">http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/s ... 710&page=3</a><!-- m -->

[Drunk Monk]