Star Wars live action show on hold according to rebel scum article. — Page 2

twister111 said:

 

I just wanted to point out that there is a billionaire out there that is risking millions of his own money to produce entertainment. That fits your question.

 

OK, but Sabin doesn't expect to LOSE that money. He thinks (I assume) it's a sound investment. I'm assuming he's a billionaire (and many billionaires do this as well) because he spends money in order to (hopeful) make money.

George Lucas says cant make the show he wants on the budget he wants, and people are saying he should suck it up and just spend more money, his financial/technical goals be damned. That strikes me as a very odd expectation.

Anyways, your question didn't discount a profit. Just that a person spend millions of thier money to produce entertainment.

I did say "loss."

TV's Frink said:

Here's what I don't understand - why is it so bad if he makes the show? 

well, for the purposes of this website, it's a kind of annoying that he's willing to spend more money than the restoration would cost on one episode about Larry Ackbar, who always wanted his son to be a senator.

I demand that we get to see Larry Ackbar!!! ;-)

Lucas making the show or not making the show seems to have no bearing on if we get the OOT or not.  Are they really mutually exclusive?

zombie84 said:

I guess the bottom line is that for a mulit-billionaire to be so concerned about profit when the show is guaranteed to be at least modestly profitable, it just smacks of unnecessary greed, and it frustrates me that this is really what the bottom line has come to mean for Lucas and his projects.

But what does Lucas see as the bottom line?

He wants to make feature film quality "Star Wars" on a TV budget. That's his goal. Really it's been what he's been working on for decade. If his goal is to make something that's "literally Star Wars" for television, consequently opening doors and pushing boundaries for all filmmakers, is that so unworthy?

The guy with a hand in developing virtual sets, HD filming, CGI, EditDroid, THX sound and all these things, has a goal he wants to achieve in the technology of filmmaking, if that's the "challenge" he's facing is it fair to say "Greedy jerk should just throw more money at it and stop being a jerk."

In his own words:

"I love television. It's a lot more fun than features." Elaborating, he said that he felt in film, there was too much risk involved, and that you give three years of your life to a project, in a medium where only 10% of projects break even, and even less truly are deemed successful.

"TV isn't like that. It's lots of fun," "If one show doesn't work, oh well, next week you're on to the next!"

"For me, the future is in television."

Note he never says TV's a lot more profitable than features, because TV isn't, even on a TV budget.

And as for Lucas's profit motivations, I wouldn't claim to know the man's soul, but somehow I doubt "Red Tails" is going to be the year's biggest blockbuster, but if it does make money, it will be largely due to the work Lucas has done in facing the challenge of making huge screen epics on modest budgets using technology.

TV's Frink said:

I demand that we get to see Larry Ackbar!!! ;-)

Lucas making the show or not making the show seems to have no bearing on if we get the OOT or not.  Are they really mutually exclusive?

Well, he just said the cost is what prevents a restoration. He's willing to spend the same dough on the one thing but not the other, that's all.

Fair enough...I don't believe him when he cites cost as the problem, however.

TheBoost said:

zombie84 said:

I guess the bottom line is that for a mulit-billionaire to be so concerned about profit when the show is guaranteed to be at least modestly profitable, it just smacks of unnecessary greed, and it frustrates me that this is really what the bottom line has come to mean for Lucas and his projects.

But what does Lucas see as the bottom line?

He said it in the article that this thread is based on: that the bottom line is that he wasn't going to make as much money as he thought he would. This has nothing to do with some philanthropic "sharing with the world to make filmmaking better for everyone." If that becomes a byproduct of the series, its secondary and incidental. What it came down to is if he made it now, he'd have a decent amount of money to add to his uncountable billions, but if he waited a few years he would have even more money to add to his uncountable billions.

I'm sorry, its just really sad to see a billionaire complaining that he doesn't think a hit TV show will make him as much money as he would like. What happened to Lucas? This was a guy who in his youth would have told the head of Warner Brothers to go fuck himself if he ever heard him say that.

He wants to make feature film quality "Star Wars" on a TV budget. That's his goal. Really it's been what he's been working on for decade. If his goal is to make something that's "literally Star Wars" for television, consequently opening doors and pushing boundaries for all filmmakers, is that so unworthy?

Yes, but he doesn't have to keep trying to make it cheaper, that's the point. He's not doing it for others, he's doing it for himself, because he wants to be able to spend the same amount of money as the competition. But why be so cheap? The guy has a billion dollars. He's acting as though he won't make a profit. Trust me, he will. In the end it comes down to greed: how can I make more than 200% profit on this? If its a show he believes in then why would he stall it because he would only make large amounts of money instead of huge amounts of money? That's what it comes down to. And for a guy that's a multi-billionaire, you would think that he wouldn't be concerned about that.

Yes, I do get that he has an interest in making technology more...efficient, let's say. But even that is just a way of expressing cost-to-quality ratios. He has an obsession with money, with doing things less expensively than his competition, but its pointless for a multi-billionaire who describes himself as an "abstract filmmaker auteur" to make this into his life. What is more important, the actual content, or the financial side? And Lucas, even though that doesn't mean the content is unimportant, has put his priority on the financial side.

If people like James Cameron had Lucas' mindset it would be another 10 years before he made Avatar. But you spend a little more money and develop technology that doesn't exist, that's how you push the envelope and advance the state of the art, and out of that experience you realize all the ways to make it cheaper the next go-round and you have all the prototypes sorted out, so that the technology becomes available sooner than if you had waited and just kept trying to get it there without actually making anything. But sitting around say, "oh, I don't know, we'd better wait for technology to catch up," you'll always be wainting. To literally make a 1-hour Star Wars film on a TV budget is impossible right now, and it won't be very much more advanced in another two years, even five, maybe even ten. Its way, way out there, you've got to actually spend money to make a product that is a stepping stone towards it and then maybe you can get it done in five years instead of ten.

It's like how Lucas wanted to make TPM for 75 million dollars. What was he smoking? Its the same as trying to make a 1-hour SW film on a TV budget. Even now you couldn't make TPM for 75 million, maybe 90 million, and only because Lucas owns ILM and Skywalker Sound so he doesn't have to pay for having to outsource it, anyone else trying to make TPM in 1999 would have had to spend at least $150 million. But instead of waiting for this technology to happen, he had to bit the bullet and just make the damn thing, and he got the price pretty low relatively speaking (but not anywhere near where he initially wanted) and because of that he got to make the two sequels much more advanced but for the same price. If he had waited for technology to become as cheap as he wanted it, he would probably be in pre-production still. But he really just wanted to make TPM because it was his 20-years-in-the-making return to directing.

I doubt its that.

What? You said its probably because of inter-personal/business issues that aren't being reported. Im saying theres no evidence for that. The story that is reported is perfectly believable and perfectly consistent with Lucas' character and history.

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