see you auntie said:
Sorry I'm a little late to the discussion.
Zombie I love you (not in a creepy way, hold off on the restraining order) but are you some kind of richist?
No...
The way I see it every decision Lucas and Lucasfilm makes is in order to protect their investment. That's a huge, pardon the pun, empire to run and it's run like any other company. It's not the dream factory where artists could get away from Hollywood and head north and make their little films away from the system as Lucas once envisioned.
Profits are the bottom line and ever increasing profits are the goal, again like any other company. Slow quarter, slow year. Lay off some staff. Or close an unprofitable department. All things that most companies including Lucasfilm have done in recent times.
It's a sad reality that Lucasfilm isn't that artists retreat that Skywalker Ranch should have been. Can you imagine what the overheads are just to keep that place running each year. Jesus. Vineyards don't maintain themselves. Some how I think most companies don't have those kind of overheads to deal with.
This. The hypocrisy and downright patheticness of the situation is just frustrating.
But beyond that, its not about capitalism and all that crap. Lucas started from nothing and made a shit load of money and along the way made some very good films too, and he also used that money to develop a lot of tools, help out schools, even charities. Good for him.
And I realize the LFL Empire is damn expensive, more expensive than most people realize. Its Lucas' right to want to make a profit. But it bugs me when he says that something isn't profitable enough when we all know it really will be. Thats just greed. And greed bothers me, especially when it comes from this man. Lucas may not lay in a swimming pool of money the way his detractors may think, but he sure has a lot more than he defends he does.
In 2004, the SE boxset sold $120 million in its first day along with a video game. Probably did about $300 million by the end of the month. How much do you think all the action figures pulled in that year? Probably combined these two elements produced $1 billion in annual sales. Plus video games, magazines, novelisations, books, television specials, and those Clone Wars DVDs. Probably over $1.5 billion in sales, and thats without any new movie. Then ROTS comes out the next year and brings in $500 million at the boxoffice, and probably about $2 billion in combined tie-ins. So from 2004-2005 you have made over $4 billion in revenue. Obviously you don't net all that, you probably only net about $3.something billion. But think about that. I realize Skywalker Ranch/Lucasfilm offices require a couple million dollars in overhead to keep running. But we're talking annual profit in the billions here. And even though it may have slowed down now, its only modestly done so.
So its just really weird to see this guy say he's afraid he might not make as much money as he would like. Its like fuck Lucas, come on. Really?
I actually would love to see the Lucasfilm books. Although with all the "Hollywood" accounting, you can never really trust them I suppose.
Good post though, SYA