Category: lucasfilm

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George Lucas has seen The Force Awakens trailer

George Lucas has seen The Force Awakens trailer. “It was intriguing,” he told Page Six at a New York screening of Strange Magic. He had more to say on the animated film, of course: “I have been working on this film for 15 years. I was thinking about Star Wars being designed for 12-year- old boys, and I thought maybe I’ll make a film for 12-year-old girls, because I have a lot of daughters. And girls go to the movies. I worked on it on the side for those years, and we finally got it done.”

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George Lucas’ original plan was to see first sequel film through before selling Lucasfilm

lucas-strange-magicUSA Today’s Brian Truitt catches up with the elusive George Lucas, who talks about his youngest daughter Everest, Strange Magic and, of course, Star Wars.

There’s not too much about Star Wars, but we do learn one thing: He originally planed to see the first film of the new trilogy through before selling the company, but Disney’s interest happened at just the right moment.

“The only thing I really regret about Star Wars is the fact I never got to see it — I never got to be blown out of my seat when the ship came over the screen,” Lucas says. “The next one, I’ll be able to enjoy it like anybody else.”

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The big picture: Bob Iger and the Millennium Falcon

iger-falcon

Fortune has a photo of Bob Iger with The Force Awaken’s Millennium Falcon, courtesy Industrial Light & Magic:

Yannick Dusseault, visual effects art director for The Force Awakens, and his team gave Fortune six options showing the Falcon in different ways. The resulting image required the custom rendering of ILM’s computer generated Falcon. According to ILM, the fabled ship was rendered in wireframe form (a skeletal version) as well as a more layered “textured render,” which were combined in Photoshop to create the final image.

Iger is the magazine’s latest cover story, one focusing on Disney and technology.

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Meet Kiri Hart, one of the women now driving Star Wars

kiri-hartThe Rebels blitz continues, with the Wall Street Journal today featuring Lucasfilm’s Kiri Hart.

Tasked by head honcho Kathleen Kennedy to develop and oversees new Star Wars content, Hart and her ‘team of five’ (the Story Group, ahem) keep a tight rein on the galaxy… Although she does know there’s room for a lot of different things in the franchise:

“I think there are boundaries, but we don’t want to rigidly define them,” she said. “It’s obviously not slapstick comedy, but there’s room for many different stories and genres that still feel like ‘Star Wars.'”

One filmmaker says she is “as close to a Kevin Feige as there is at Lucas,” and in a longer interview she details some of Lucasfim’s recent choices.

On development:

We pretty quickly arrived at a content plan that stretches out for several years and we didn’t go looking for those ideas. Those existed internally. We were in a situation of looking for people to help us execute the ideas we had.

On setting aside the EU:

I’m crazily passionate about this idea of narratives travelling across different platforms. It just feels like a golden opportunity. This is a fictional universe that not only supports [narrative coherence] but invites it.

In addition, we wouldn’t be giving the right green space to our filmmakers if we mandated they stay within the stories that have been told [in books.]

On diversity:

I haven’t experienced “Star Wars” being for boys, because I loved it from seven years old. I was so powerfully influenced by Princess Leia as a kid. I remember being transfixed by her — she was so empowered and smart and funny.

There are a lot of different types of characters. “Star Wars” should be diverse because it’s a big galaxy.

This certainly sheds some light for us on how things are working internally these days!