There was a rumour a couple weeks ago that the disappointing performance of TPM is making them consider releasing AOTC and ROTS a month apart, like they did in 1997. Just a rumour though.

TPM is not really a flop, because it stands to make a small profit, if flop equates to losing money. But AOTC has historically made less money than Episode I, even when it was regarded as better than TPM. Today, it is more often considered the worst of the bunch. So, it may stand have even less attendence than its original gross would suggest. That means that, if TPM walks away with $43 million or something, AOTC will probably pull in $35 million. I don't know if there is even any profit in that figure--it's likely a break-even.

Would that be enough to axe all of this? Normally, you look at the six films as a whole: yes, Episodes I and II may just break even, but Episode III will make decent money, and whatever losses you took up front on the first two will be made up for by Star Wars alone, and then Empire and Jedi are pure gravy. So in the end, you walk away ahead, because you shouldn't be measuring any film on its own if this is part of a series re-release. But Lucas is making veiled threats about not releasing the rest if TPM "doesn't work." While the term flop may be debated, TPM's release clearly has not worked. But I call bullshit. It's just an empty threat to goad people into seeing things they would rather not. And people called it. If anything, they will skip right to Star Wars. The reason being, by 2011 Lucas had already invested more money into converting ANH into 3D than the entire cost of the original film. I don't know how much of it has been converted, but they've been working on it since around 2007 and they've probably run up a $15 million bill by now. Lucas is too cheap to throw that down the toilet because no one showed up to see Jar Jar Binks.