The purchase of Lucasfilm by Disney is no doubt known to you at this point. It means a drastic shift in the future of the Star Wars universe and several of you have asked me about this event so here we go…
As a move on Disney’s part, it makes perfect sense. George Lucas recently “quit” the Star Wars franchise after realizing that no one cared about his artistic vision and just wanted him to let the stories out that we loved, not shove new contrived bullshit down our throats. The Mandalorians are a peaceful people who banished all the warriors to the moon to die out? Ridiculous. I digress…back to Disney. With Lucas’ apparent departure from Lucasfilm, a minor scale duplication of what happened to Apple after Jobs died occurred. Confidence diminished in the future prospects of the company because what was Star Wars without Lucas at its helm? Disney swooped in and capitalized on Lucas’ disillusionment to buy the whole company for an ironic 4.4 billion dollars. I say ironic because that’s roughly the amount of money that the 6 films have grossed since 1977. Disney got a steal honestly. They know control one of the most popular franchises under one of the most powerful names in media. They will saturate the market with Star Wars in the coming years to build their new product because they need to get the hype up for the new films.
Another point people have wondered about, is the truth behind a new film in 2015. I believe that this is absolutely true and will go further. According to BusinessWire’s coverage of the deal, the plan is not on to create a Star Wars VII but also VIII and IX. This makes perfect sense as we are stuck in a era of Hollywood that says, why make one when you can make three? Robert Iger, Chairman and CEO of Walt DIsney Company, has stated that Disney believes there is a vast pent-up demand for Star Wars films so they will make this new trilogy including future plans to release a new Star Wars film every two or three years after that. This is every Star Wars fans dream but is it actually the beginning of an awful nightmare? The fact that they promise a new film by 2015 seems quite bold to me. At that sort of timescale, they would be forced to already have a script greenlit or at least very close to it. How could they possibly get an entire motion picture off the ground in that amount of time and actually expect it to be even a halfway decent film? Look at Green Lantern. Its biggest problem was that the script was rushed and overloaded. Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies were doing amazing so Time Warner forced Green Lantern out too quickly to try and capitalize on the superhero fad. I worry that this will happen to Star Wars and set a really low bar for the rest of the films to disappoint us again and again.
This isn’t all bad though. I feel that there may be hope in the form of Kathleen Kennedy. Quick bio: She has mainly worked as a producer of various films since 1981 when she got her start with Steven Spielberg working on projects like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Poltergeist, and E.T. Since then she has produced many films that we all know and love. She also co-founded Amblin Entertainment. Check out her IMDB. She has a very solid CV. She became co-chair of Lucasfilm earlier this year and with the Disney acquisition, she will be named President. After all of that, she looks pretty good right now. Lucas was never a real artist of flim that he thinks he is. He started out great but he is merely a shadow of the random greatness he acheived back in 1977. Kathleen Kennedy, on the other hand, has been producing quality material for the past 30 years. Though there are some questionable decisions like backing Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull and The Last Airbender but I get it. They were made by big names and were popular franchises but that doesn’t guarantee success. That is the one major concern I have. She may be too corporate now and has lost touch like Lucas did before here. To quote Obi-Wan, “Kathleen was seduced by the dark side of the Force.”
In conclusion, I can only say that I hope for the future of the franchise but I honestly don’t expect those hopes to become real. I will watch every single one of those film and probably buy a lot of Disney’s cheap toys or something. Damnit, I’m a fan but it really is getting harder and harder to keep going back to someone who you just know are going to let you down again.
What Are You Talking About? 