Tag Archives: george-lucas

Why did Disney only pay $4B for Lucasfilm, ILM, and Skywalker Sound?

When I first read the news that Disney was acquiring Lucasfilm, ILM, and Skywalker Sound all in one deal I tweeted that I didn’t understand how all of these companies – along with the rights to Star Wars, partial rights to Indiana Jones, Lucas Arts and much, much more – were only worth $4 billion. But I may have figured it out; George Lucas knows they are worth more but wants Disney, and only Disney, to takeover the reigns. And, Lucas will make boatloads of dough on this deal too.

I’m not alone in wondering though. Jason Kottke:

Crazy. A non-Lucas non-prequel Star Wars film will hopefully be pretty great, but the purchase price is puzzling. Only $4 billion?

According to my research Lucasfilm, ILM, and Skywalker Sound have a combined team of thousands of employees. No doubt some of these will not be making the transition to Disney. But this is a solid workforce.

Take a look at ILM’s Wikipedia page. That is some filmography. At my count I see at least three if not five blockbuster releases per year. Depending on how those deals were structured, I’d be surprised if ILM didn’t get some sort of royalties for some of those films long after they’ve debuted. Not to mention the work done on Bluray/DVD releases.

And ILM’s pipe seems pretty full too. They have nine deals in the bag all of which are pretty high-budget projects.

And, even though Skywalker Sound is relatively small, they own the IP for THX and work on arguably the best films released each year. Perhaps they too can structure sweetheart deals.

So Disney, without a doubt, got a steal of a deal. But, we have to look at this transaction a little differently than just looking at the face value because Lucas took half of the money in Disney stock.

The $4 billion was split; half cash, half stock. Disney is promising to make Star Wars a much more international hit. As it stands, a huge percentage of the revenue from Star Wars comes from toys bought in the US. Disney can bring Star Wars to China, Japan and other nations where toys are a huge hit. Just not Star Wars toys. And, presumably, they can do something special in all of their parks worldwide to bring people into the parks. They can also fund, manage, and distribute new Star Wars releases, movies, games, toys – and George Lucas doesn’t have to lift a finger.

Brian Warner:

The fact that Lucas is taking half the deal in stock is a sign that he sees this transaction as an investment for the future, instead of just a quick way to cash out. Considering the fact that Disney’s stock is up more than 32% this year, from a low of $38 to a recent 52 week high of $53 per share, Lucas’ payday could increase by hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.

So Lucas now owns 40 million shares of Disney. Effectively doubling his personal net-worth with a single signature. Some analysts project they will bank more than $30B on this sale in short order. Their stock is already up two points (that’s $1.8B in market cap) and it isn’t even lunch yet. To Lucas that’s $40M more than he expected. So I guess Lucas knows exactly what he’s doing.

Lucasfilm, ILM, and Skywalker Sound sold to Disney

The price? Four Instagrams.

Dean J. Robinson:

Lots of people I follow on twitter [sic] (pretty much all of them actually) are Star Wars fans of some description – and the general consensus is that while they are quite surprised by the announcement they don’t necessarily have negative feeling about it. In fact many seem enthused by the prospect of a Star Wars film that George Lucas isn’t at the helm for.

My little tirade on Twitter last night may have been seen by some as an indication that I’m mad or upset about the transaction. I’m not. Well, maybe I am.

If George no longer wants ownership of Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc. etc., or the companies that have done the sound and special effects for countless films over the last 35 years there is probably no better home than Disney.

I am upset, however, at the current state that Star Wars is left in. A Star Wars without George Lucas is not the same Star Wars. Think about it. A New Hope was a smashing success in 1977. Arguably one of the biggest successes in film history on many fronts. And, economics aside, it is a great Sci-Fi film. Some say that Empire Strikes Back is one of the best sequels of all time. And, aside from the Ewoks, Return of the Jedi was about as good of a trilogy ender as anyone could hope for. And then, a slow plummet. The Special Editions. Episodes I, II, and III simply never had a chance. (By the way, I think Episode III was actually pretty great. The Emperor really comes out looking like a clear winner.) And the Bluray release.

The last thing George did was go in and fiddle with the originals and add Ewok eyelids and emotion to Darth Vader where no emotion was needed. As Dean said some are excited by the prospect of an Episode 7 that he has nothing to do with. I, on the other hand, was rooting for George to come back and make something great since I was very young. And now we’re left with George Lucas never doing another Star Wars. I guess I was always hoping he’d find that same spark he had in the 70s and 80s.

That’s what I’m most upset about.

Something I wish George Lucas had said

Steven Spielberg:

I’ve resigned myself to accepting that what the film was at the time of its creation is what it always should be for future generations.

I think Steven learned a little something from his friend George’s mistakes. Steven is, however, all for restoring his older films into higher quality formats as he’s currently working on Raiders of the Lost Ark being released on IMAX and Jaws being digitally remastered for Blu-ray.

/via John Siracusa on Twitter.

George Lucas, Following his heart back to Star Wars

“I can go and make half a dozen ‘THXes.’ I’ll lose everything I put into them, guaranteed. But I can have a lot of fun doing it.” — George Lucas

Ugh.  This is the same drivel that we heard from George Lucas while he was making the Star Wars prequels.  He kept saying, and I’m quoting loosely here, that “once I’m done with these prequels I’m free to make whatever movies I want, even if I lose money”.

As it turns out, “whatever movies I want” is turning into more Star Wars projects. A lot more.  Currently Lucasarts has created a full-length computer-animated feature-film (like the overuse of hyphens there?), a follow-up episodic computer-animated TV show (of which there are a reported 100 episodes in the bag), and a live action TV show that is currently in the works.

These are a lot of work, even with a staff of thousands that Lucas can beckon any time he needs them.  Producing a film is no small task.  So I think it will be years before we see a THX-esque style film from Lucas.

This isn’t to say that I’m complaining.  I’m a Star Wars fan to the bone marrow. More! More! More!  Oh, the reason I’m writing all of this is to tell you that this is a pretty good article in the New York Times.

Source: Free to Follow His Heart Right Back to ‘Star Wars’.

Just a side note about this article:  The title of the piece is “Free to Follow His Heart Right Back to ‘Star Wars’” while the page title on the Web is “George Lucas, Free to Follow His Instincts Right Back to ‘Star Wars’”.  I found that sorta interesting.

A few fun facts about Star Wars

No where near a complete list of some of the most interesting facts surrounding the creation of what is now one of the most iconic film epics of all time, but there are some interesting tidbits.

A few of the more notable omissions on this list, since they nearly mentioned them but somehow failed to mention them are:

  • Harrison Ford never really read for the part of Han Solo but was filling in to help out with the casting of the other characters.  Lucas and Co. couldn’t find anyone better than Harrison and he agreed to play the part.
  • George Lucas, although he managed to get funding through 20th Century Fox via Alan Ladd, Jr., managed to pen an unprecedented deal for marketing rights.  This included the creation of toys, tshirts, and other products based off of the movie.
  • ILM, or Industrial Light and Magic, the foremost experts in Special Effects and used for a large portion of the movies that continue to be made out of Hollywood (including a division that was spun-off, bought by Apple, Inc. CEO Steve Jobs, and is now named Pixar) all came to be during the filming of the first Star Wars film.
There are others I’m sure.  But I have to recommend that if you are interested in this sort of thing – be sure to watch the special features that ship with the special edition DVD box set of the original Star Wars films.  There is tons of information to be found there.

Re-watching Indiana Jones: The Temple of Doom

When I was a kid Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom was one of the more gory movies I had ever seen.  Men having their hearts torn out while they were still living, alligators (which were being portrayed as crocodiles) ripping flesh from bone in a death roll, and voodoo practicing children stabbing dolls.  For a child, all of these are a little overwhelming.

A young George and Harrison.

As an adult I watch The Temple of Doom and chuckle.  The “over the top” quality of this installment of the Indiana Jones franchise is much higher than that of the other two movies.  I mean come on – the cart scene on the tracks?  You just have to laugh.

The setting for this film, when compared to the other two existing films, is also light years different.  In both The Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade – Indiana Jones begins on an adventure, goes back to his job as a professor, and then joins the race against the clock to find something before the Nazis do.  This format works best for Indiana Jones and I think that The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will end up being a mashup of both of these formats.  In all of The Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones is out of the country, with brand new people we’ve never seen.  The time element is also non-existent.

Ok, the good the bad and the ugly.  The good: The Temple of Doom is, again, a fun ride and has some of the best scenes in any of the Indiana Jones films.  The scene from the Obi Wan bar is classic as is the journey to India.  The bad: The Temple of Doom, in my opinion, pales in comparison to Raiders or Crusade. The ugly: None of the characters that we liked in the first two movies even make a cameo, oh and Kate Capshaw.

I’ve re-watched Indiana Jones; The Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade!

Re-watching Indiana Jones: The Raiders of the Lost Ark

Raiders of the Lost Ark debuted in movie theaters in 1981, when I was only one year old.  I don’t remember the first time, nor how many times, I saw this movie – but I do know that I loved it as a child, and now I know I really enjoy it as an adult too.

Sure “movie making magic” has improved so much over the years that much of the special effects, dead mannequins, and sound effects sometimes come across as laughable – but at least they are somewhat believable (unlike some of today’s outlandish impossible feats of human nature).  There are some scenes that are undeniably real which sported no visual effects, besides perhaps speeding up the frame rate, which were refreshing.  These were the moments in the film that made Indiana Jones real, gave him character, and made you want to see what he’d pull off next.

I think Andrew was the one who said, while we were watching Raiders of the Lost Ark last night, that a few of the scenes felt very much like James Bond.  I think George Lucas and/or Steven Speilberg have come right out and said that some of the inspiration for the franchise was a Bond-like, American figure, in the 1930s and 40s.  A few scenes feel more like Bond than others.  Like the scene when Indiana is fighting the huge bald guy while the plane is in a perpetual spin and fuel is making its way towards a flame.  The “setup” for the catastrophe and Indiana being the only one aware of what was happening certainly feels like a Bond moment.

End of Raiders. Beginning of Crystal Skull?

Raiders is probably my favorite Indiana Jones film, and I think it is only because it was the first.  The Last Crusade, which I’m looking forward to re-watching soon, is definitely in close second.  I enjoy the subject matter of The Last Crusade more than Raiders, I think. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that they don’t make movies like this anymore, and I’m beginning to wonder if The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will pale in comparison to Raiders, Temple, and Crusade.  Chris thinks that they will have a ton of special effects.  I’m hoping they don’t.  The trailer shows some special effects, and I do expect them to use effects in scenes where nothing else would make sense, but I’m hoping there is at least one or two scenes where Indiana Jones does it himself and not some digital double.

I’ve re-watched Indiana Jones; The Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade!