SilverWook said:

imperialscum said:

Looking at the thing from a practical (realistic) perspective, Kurtz definitely earned his replacement. This was a self-financed film by Lucas. The shooting time and the budget doubled. This is something even a major studio would be extremely worried about. Well one could argue to Kurtz's defence that Kershner worked extremely slowly, but it is producer's job to ensure things progress as intended (either in a nice or rough manner).

The massive box office receipts, because the movie turned out to be really good, and the tons of toys sold, because the movie turned out to be really good, apparently don't mean much to George. Isn't the end result what really matters?

If Empire had tanked, there would have been no saga. Star Wars would have likely been forever written off as an unrepeatable box office fluke. We'd probably have a nicely restored Criterion Blu Ray of it now though.

I was speaking purely from a practical perspective. At that moment, the bank didn't care about "how successful the film WILL be" because obviously they couldn't know/predict (the main question was probably "would it even get finished?"). They were pulling the loan. At that point Lucas and his film would go bankrupt (and we wouldn't even get the film). He had to go beg Fox to guarantee the loan. Miraculously they didn't get any of his sequel and merchandising rights.

The extra time was mostly spent on group discussions with actors and countless of retakes. So even if the acting wasn't as good as it is, the film would still turn out great and it (plus toys etc.) would sell just as good.

Now personally I think the extra time/money was worth it. But as I said, I was just speaking from a realistic perspective.