Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
It’s Part 3! George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy talk about their meeting and his proposal for her to run Lucasfilm. “I love the challenge,” Kennedy says.
“It’s just such a perfect fit,” Lucas says. “She actually has all the qualities necessary to run a company like this.”
On the official blog today, Howard Roffman talks about his history with George Lucas, Bob Iger and Kathleen Kennedy, as well as his emergence from semi-retirement. “The prospect of being involved with a new trilogy of Star Wars films made by a new generation of filmmakers was nothing short of exhilarating for me,” he writes.
A CJ reader attending a Lucasfilm university recruiting event in October noticed something curious. During the Lucasfilm Animation portion of the presentation, University Relations Manager Anita Stokes said that in addition to The Clone Wars and Detours, “Lucasfilm Animation is also working on a feature film.” Our reader says it was heavily implied that this was a Clone Wars movie.
I have my skeptic hat on, even with yesterday’s report/very possible misquote of “two or three films a year.” With 3-D re-releases of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith late next year, plus the original trilogy to (presumably) spread out through 2014 before the new films in 2015, it seems like Lucasfilm is quickly approaching a Star Wars saturation point in theaters. I could certainly see a full-length Clone Wars movie for TV – to launch the show on Disney XD, perhaps? – but ‘feature’ implies otherwise.
Of course, this mystery feature could also very well be the fairy project or, if the Disney deal scuttled that, something else entirely. Or maybe brand-new Star Wars to aim for the Episode VII-VIII gap – perhaps related to the new films? A launching pad for another animated series, even? Time will tell…
The Star Wars issue of Entertainment Weekly isn’t out yet, but apparently Kotaku got an early peek at it – and they’re reporting that Kathleen Kennedy says that Lucasfilm wants to make “two or three films a year.”
The full quote appears in the comments, from Luke Plunkett:
Lucasfilm’s co-chairman and soon-to-be president, Kathleen Kennedy, has told employees she wants the company to produce two or three films a year (it’s averaged fewer than four per decade), and first up is Star Wars: Episode VII for 2015, which will pick up sometime after Darth Vader gave his life to overthrow (figuratively and literally) the Emperor and save Luke in 1983’s Episode VI— Return of the Jedi. Yes, the plan is to return to the characters in the first trilogy (1977–83). Whether the original actors will have significant roles or merely be on hand to pass the baton to a new generation of actors—something Lucasfilm tried with mixed success with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Disney with TRON: Legacy—is unclear.
Two or three? Well, we can probably assume we’ll get three in 2014 – the 3-D re-releases of the original trilogy. But somehow, I doubt that’s what she’s talking about… Disney seems mostly focused on Star Wars, but that’s… A lot of Star Wars. (Market saturation much?) If they are all Star Wars, anyway.
… Or this could all be a misquote of the original thing we heard about one movie every 2 to 3 years. Personally, that’s what I’m hoping for.
Lucasfilm hired Brenda Chapman – who was the writer and original director for Brave at Pixar- in August. Reports were that she was consulting on a ‘mystery project’ for Lucasfilm Animation…. But in the wake of the Disney sale and sequel trilogy announcements? Bleeding Cool notes some of her recent tweets – including a link to a Time story on Episode VII. Could she be involved with the new films somehow? ” We will just have to wait and see what happens,” she tweeted to one such inquiry.
Of course, it’s worth noting that all of Chapman’s credits are in animation – she directed Dreamwork’s The Prince of Egypt – and Episode VII already has a writer. But ‘consultant’ does cover a lot of ground, and the timing is pretty curious…
And yes, this is pure, unbridled speculation – even Bleeding Cool admits she might really be working on that fairy musical we’ve barely heard about, or something else entirely. Still, an interesting prospect.
George Lucas will be one of the biggest charitable givers ever when he donates his Disney billions, Forbes says. (via)
Disney is paying Lucas $4.05 billion in cash and stock for Lucasfilm and its subsidiaries. He plans to put most of the money towards education.
In other news, Mellody Hobson, who has been romantically linked with Lucas since 2006, has been named chairman of DreamWorks Animation. She’s been on the board of the company, which was co-founded by Steven Spielberg, since 2004.
Today in Episode 7 reports, we have the Los Angeles Times’ Steven Zeitchik and John Horn saying that “several different screenwriters paid visits to Lucasfilm’s Northern California compound to pitch George Lucas and his co-chair Kathleen Kennedy their ideas for the new live-action installment.” Their source went on to say “they were well-known screenwriters with experience creating big-budget Hollywood films,” and the stories were not adapted from existing Star Wars books. (via)
Their source is anonymous, but this does dovetail neatly with something Kennedy said in the video released Tuesday: “We’re sitting down with a couple of writers and we’re starting to discuss ideas; We’re starting to talk about what those stories might be.” I feel comfortable putting this one in the ‘fairly plausible’ column.
EOnline caught up with George Lucas to ask what and how he feels about moving on from Lucasfilm and Star Wars.
“It was 40 years of work,” Lucas said when we caught up with him at the Ebony Power 100 Gala at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall. “It has been my life, but I am ready to move on to bigger and better things.”
He also talked about his charity work and said he’s going to keep making “littler personal films,” but “the ones I am working on now will never get into the theaters.”
A spokesperson tells The Hollywood Reporter that George Lucas plans to put most of the money he received from Disney – $4.05 billion dollars – towards “a foundation which will primarily focus on educational issues.”
This could mean a new foundation, but Lucas is already the chairman of Edutopia, a organization that fosters innovation in schools, part of The George Lucas Educational Foundation. He’s used the Foundation to make donations to various philanthropic causes in the past, including a record-breaking $175 million to USC in 2006. In 2010, Lucas was among the first to sign the Giving Pledge, vowing to give away at least half his wealth to charitable causes.
Stop compiling those exhaustive lists of your favorite Star Wars books: A Lucasfilm source tells EOnline’s Leslie Gornstein that Episode 7 will be “an original story.” Gornstein goes on to say that “Episode 7 will literally be nothing you’ve ever seen or read before from the Star Wars universe.” Not surprised. Not surprised in the least…