zombie84

Big blockbusters will always do fine as long as they have brand recognition and merchandise/tie-ins. It's kind of silly to just look at box office grosses all the time, because in actuality that's not where the profit is; studios don't make blockbuster movies, they make highly-promoted multi-media, cross-promotional products, of which a motion picture is one component. You can lose money at the theatre and still come out in the black because you have home video, video games, Pizza Hut combos, Pepsi sales, a board game, action figures and collectible toys, posters, comic books, and maybe if you are lucky a cartoon or something. Blockbusters are financed based on this understanding and that's why they keep being made, even if the film itself doesn't make it's budget back upon initial release.

Unfortunately, that means there aren't really original blockbusters anymore. Avatar has been an exception, but there are a lot of other reasons for that. Star directors can maybe get an original blockbuster going, and a few random exceptions that prove the rule (Battle:LA, Sky Captain, etc., all financial losers). Otherwise it's all sequels, remakes and adaptations, for financial security reasons.

I'll admit: I did this in 2006 to four films me and my buds shot in high school. I made them the same way: in camera cuts, left-stereo channel to dub in music from a CD in some scenes, and filming my monitor with PowerPoint running for credits. I digitized the VHS tapes, but then I did re-editing, new music and sound, even new special effects. But I did include the originals too! :p

The Clone War film didn't bomb in the financial sense, because it's obvious if you've seen the movie that it's budget was incredibly low. But it bombed in the sense that it was not only critically reviled, it was incredibly unpopular. It did virtually no business, despite a pretty heavy marketing campaign and the most popular, lucrative brand name backing it up. When a Star Wars film only does $35 million at the box-office and gets D- reviews, that's about as successful as the Holiday Special. Luckily, contrary to the initial intentions of the release, it turned out to not be very representative of the actual show, which is lightyears better. It's almost like they were trying to sully the shows rep by putting the worst episode ideas upfront, but of course the reality is that Lucas thought these episodes were a quality introduction to the series. Blarg.

As for 3D finances, I sort of broke this down on a page earlier, but it actually seems to me to be a bit of a challenge for Lucasfilm to make any large amount of profit. The cost of a film is usually it's production budget times two, and the 3D conversion costs at least $15 million, with a high-ball of about $30 million. That means it needs to make between $30 and $60 million just to break even, and between $50 and $90 million to be considered successful. Not necessarily impossible, but pretty hard--February openers rarely break the $30 million opening weekend, and most do about $15-20 million, settling on around $30-40 million by the time they go away. They also have the luxury of a home video release, which makes up about half the profit these days, a safety net that Lucasfilm doesn't have.

George Lucas never stated the restoration of the original was a waste of time. He said, at first, that he simply didn't want to do it because he was opposed to the idea of people watching the originals, and then he said he would like to but that its too expensive. He never said it was a waste of time.

Talk about putting words into George Lucas' mouth...

It's not just special effects but the sheer scope of the productions. You simply didn't have special effects extravaganzas in the 1990s until around 1997 or 1998 when CGI started taking off. You had films like Starship Troopers and X-Men and Phantom Menace--you simply didn't have films like that before. There is no comparison you can make, until you go back to the similar boom in the late-70/early-80s but even those were on much smaller scales. You never had action scenes with as much explosions and physical stunts as in Michael Bay's Transformers, and you rarely had films with as much prominent and as many visual effects as that film has. So, it's pretty hard to make a comparison to film cost of the past--films simply weren't that big, with rare exceptions like Apocalypse Now, but even that film only has one humongous action scene.

If you compare movies of the 2000s with those from the 90s with similar scope you see that the budget is not wildly different. Fincher's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo cost about 90 million. In 1998, Ronin cost about 75 million in todays dollars. They both in my opinion have similar scope, Ronin has more action scenes but Dragon Tattoo has more locations and a bit more ambitious story, but they are useful comparisons. Movies do cost more money these days, partly because of an increase in actor/director/producer perks and partly because film equipment is more expensive than it has been in the past (excepting the cost of celluloid itself, which is now being phased out, but then replaced with more expensive cameras in most cases), and partly because star/director/producer salaries have gone up overall.

But if you look at the only other time in history vaguely comparable to today--roughly 1978-1983--you see that those special effects blockbusters have similar cost to today. Star Trek:TMP cost $35 million in a day where a typical Hollywood A-list drama like All the President's Men cost only $7 million. So if today a typical A-list drama like Social Network costs $40 million, if you apply the same ratio (1:5) that gives you $200 million for the blockbusters of our time, which is pretty accurate. Nowadays, there are more special effects than in the 70s and early 80s, so the cost is more, plus today blockbusters are usually brand franchises with licensing fees and long development periods, so they often surpass the $200 million mark. There are even more extreme examples in the past--Cleopatra, in 1963, was a huge, huge film, like Troy or Alexander, the type of films they might make today, and that cost $45 million in a day where a typical film cost about $1 million or $2 million and an action film like The Great Escape cost $4 million. If we peg a typical film costing $2 million in 1963 and $40 million today, making Cleopatra in 2012 would be like making a blockbuster with a $900 million budget. And the film made profit too! It's remembered as a bomb but it seems to have grossed 20 million more than its budget (quite a big difference back then) by the time the decade closed.

You don't think critics calling him a hack, Rolling Stone saying his screenwriting would induce projectile vomiting, saying he has nothing of substance to say, that he his films are not worth your time, that he is a greedy businessman trying primarily to sell toys and not make art--you don't think that would be seen as something personally offensive to him? If that isn't, I don't know what would--newspaper critics aren't going to tell him to go jump off a bridge or anything that harsh, and most people online aren't that harsh too, they mostly just stick to trashing his attempts and critizing his motives and saying he is greedy, sell-out, etc., pretty similar to what some of the harsher proper-media says. 

And, I also don't think he is talking about any one group of people in that quote. He doesn't say "fans" or "audiences" or "people on the internet" (a group he has specifically called out for their complaints on more than one occassion). Critics in newspapers trashed him and his films. Fans on websites and forums trashed him and his films. General audiences had some criticisms for him. And people writing reviews and pieces online trashed him and his films too. But these are all "critics", they are people giving him criticism, not just newspaper writers--the internet changed a lot of things compared to 1983. Lucas knows all of this because he has shown that he is well-aware of these activities--he's even made an ambiguous possible reference to OT.com in the last months.

So that's why he says "everybody" criticized the films. He's right. His critics weren't just those writing in newspapers, there is a whole other world where people have a publishing medium for criticism, with actual print media just being one component of a much larger picture of widespread criticism. Fans, audiences, newspaper writers, critics online and in websites. That's why he doesn't say "online fans" or "newspaper writers", he says "everyone", he knows that there was pretty widespread and wide-ranging criticism and he knows it wasn't confined just to print media, especially today. And, of course, all that criticism does hurt on some level, because people are saying not only are his films not enjoyable but that he has no talents. I'll re-quote the 60 Minutes interview from 1999:

Leslie Stahl: When critics go after your directing, your writing--it has to hurt.

George Lucas: Oh it hurts. It always hurts. It hurts a great deal. But part of directing is that you get attacked, sometimes in very personal ways. [goes on to his green-house/white-house analogy]

So, yes, while I don't think he necessarily thinks critics are important, he clearly doesn't think they are unimportant, and the picture you are trying to paint about him being stoically unaffected by critics is not accurate. Clearly, criticism from people, whether they are writing in a printed magazine or simply posting stuff online, is important enough to him that he is using it as an explanation for his retirement. Whether you believe that or not--I don't really--the fact that he would state it in the first place shows how much the criticism irks him personally.

I really don't know why this is being debated still. There were plenty of quotes and arguments presented in the previous page that shows, yes, Lucas does feel the sting of critics sometimes, but he looks at it as being part of the job so tries not to focus too much on it. But he still is affected by criticism. I don't know how you could take a quote where Lucas flat out says "everyone criticizes the movies I make so now I'm not going to make any more" and somehow try to paint a picture of a man stoically ignorant to critics.

TV's Frink said:

Also, vbangle is ignoring me, but I caught him browsing my TRM thread yesterday. ;-)

This deserves an LOL

Saying any SW thing is "like ESB on steroids" is just MarketingSpeak for "it'll be like that one you like the best--but better!!" It doesn't really mean anything, at least at this point, it's just the promoter producer trying to sell it to fans.

I saw this, and their numbers are completely off.

Star Wars was not a low budget film. It was not even a modestly budgeted one. It was a big-budget blockbuster and one of the most expensive films made in its day. A typical film, like Annie Hall or Taxi Driver, cost about $4 million. Special effects films like Logans Run and Planet of the Apes sequels cost closer to $6 or $7 million (which is what SW was initially budgeted at). At $11 million, Star Wars was one of most expensive films of its time--not on the level of Jaws, but up there. All the crew talks about how there was no money--this is because the scope of the film was so disproportionate to the budget that everything had to be stretched to its limits. Lucas made a $20 million film for $11 million. Part of the reason the budget didn't go that far is because Lucas developed all the VFX in-house, which cost a lot upfront but saved a lot overall--Peter Jackson did this with LOTR too.

If Star Wars was made today it would similar to the budget of the prequels--$250 million blockbusters made for half of that cost. But still bloody expensive.

I'm not sure if he is a pathological liar, but he certainly has a victimization disorder of some kind.

On the subject of Red Tails, there was actually a movie already made about the Tuskegee Airmen a few years ago (one better made by most accounts), which makes his claims about difficulty getting support for the reasons he states very suspect. The whole "black people making accomplishments in early-mid-20th-century America in a military context" has become such a popular pseudo-genre that its practically a cliche--the fact that Cuba Gooding Jr is in the film is even part of the cliche! See: Men of Honor, Pearl Harbor. So I find it hard to believe there was so much against Lucas because he is so maverick. The film isn't maverick--it's very old-fashioned and traditional, and works within a genre cliche of the modern era. I do find it, however, very easy to believe some studio execs would pass on the film because the script was weak, as that's been one of the most consistent things said about the film now that it is actually out. It was the same thing with Radioland Murders--"oh, I'm so maverick this took me 25 years to get made because no studio could see the vision." Or: the film was a piece of shit, which is why smarter heads turned it down for two decades until he finally found an executive who couldn't refuse a modestly-budgeted George Lucas film, whereupon it was thrashed by critics and lost a ton of money before being entirely forgotten and ending the screenwriting career of Willard Huyck. Red Tails has done slightly better business and slightly better reviews than Radioland Murders, but the bar is pretty low there.

Haha Lorne Peterson, nice. Peter Mayhew used to post at TF.N but I don't know if he does anymore.

It looks like this is what happened:

-In the script, the assailants are very exotically-described aliens, one being some rodent and another guy having a million eyes. It also describes the rodent being split in half down the middle, in addition to the severed arm, which it doesn't state who it belongs to.

-This was changed for the film because they probably couldn't afford such elaborate designs with the money they had to work with. I think a lot of the cantina costumes were recycled from other films and from pieces left laying around, especially in the original UK shoot (which is why so many inserts were done in pick-ups using much better costumes--most of the more memorable cantina monsters and aliens, featured in close-ups, came from this shoot). So they found an alien costume--one of the better ones from the UK shoot--that looked like a walrus and decided the guy with all the dialogue would just be a human with some prosthetics on his face, who would simply keel over. The walrus guy they decided is the one with his arm being lopped off, which they filmed in an insert, with a flipper.

-In editing, they probably thought either the flipper looked too silly and rubbery, or that it couldn't possibly hold and operate a pistol, or both, and so when it was decided to do cantina reshoots in LA that was a shot they wanted to redo, as it was pretty simple. This meant finding an alternate arm with a different, non-flipper design. The whole thing was supposed to be quick, almost impressionistic in the editing, so any mismatch is forgiveable--you can only really see the original flipper in wideshots if you freeze-frame, which wasn't possible at the time the film was made.

-Gary Kurtz selected the wolfman hand from the Rick Baker collection they used, probably because it was the best sculpt. They needed a hand, and it had to look alien and not just a normal hand. Apparently they had the entire costume there and tried to film a decapitation too, more in line with the graphic description in the script, but it was judged as too harsh, so you just had the wolf hand in the film.

-Flash forward 30 years and fans armed with VHS, Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-rays are freeze-framing through the sequence and noticing the reshoot/originalshoot discrepancy.

Lucas says he doesn't care about critics, but with the onslaught that Episode I brought he pretty much has to say that, to save face. He's human and we all know if a human being was in his position and there was so many people saying he is a terrible director and writer, and his fans are even making websites and petitions to get him to stop, that has to hurt. And in fact he has admitted this, under the properly candid conditions. But what can the man do? All he can do is basically try to roll with it and say, "well, who cares about their opinion anyway." But he hears his critics, and he knows, sort of, what they are saying. Lucas makes these films for an audience, contrary to what he says ("I make them for myself"--no you don't George, you make them for an audience and you make great pains to the best of your ability to ensure the audience enjoys the film within the context of your storytelling goals). I'm quoting the exchange below from memory but I'm pretty sure this is verbatim:

Leslie Stahl: When critics go after your directing, your writing--it has to hurt.

George Lucas: Oh it hurts. It always hurts. It hurts a great deal. But part of directing is that you get attacked, sometimes in very personal ways. [goes on to his green-house/white-house analogy]

And of course, Lucas dropped out Jar Jar Binks almost entirely for the following two films when he was a main character in Episode I. Some people say, "oh, his part in the story was done, where would he fit in Ep. II/III". But please, really? You don't think if Jar Jar had been the hit Lucas was hoping that he would find a place for him? He didn't have a place at all in the prequels for the droids, but he forced them in deliberately because of fans, because their characters were hits, even to the point that his rough draft of Episode III didn't even have R2D2 and C3P0, because he couldn't think of excuses to include them in the plot. Fan/audience/critic pleasing is also why Boba Fett is in there, and half the other OT references (Han Solo was even in the first draft of Episode III). In fact, Lucas outlines to ILM artists that critics complained the Episode I Yoda looked fake, even though he was technically more advanced than in 1980, and so it was really important to make Episode II Yoda match the originals ("Puppets to Pixels" doc).

Lucas not only listens to his critics, but he sometimes changes the films to please them. But he tries to save face, he's stubborn and doesn't want to seem like he was "wrong" so he denies that critics/audiences matter, that he makes the films only the way he wants. But nobody that is human or in the business of storytelling would believe that. And contrary to the brave front he pretty much has to put up, for the sake of his own dignity--the sting of critics hurts a great deal and that's why he tries not to put a lot of attention on them. But he still does care on some level about what they say. He's well aware of things, whether it is online gusher-basher wars, fan edits, or what the media is reporting. His rather advanced state of knowledge about all of this alone shows that he does keep tabs on all of these things. And of course in the link that inspired this he says he doesn't want to make more Star Wars because they just receive criticism. If he didn't listen to critics or fans or whathaveyou then why would that matter? But it does matter, he not only has bitterness over the criticism he gets, but it's so severe that it's discouraging him from the idea of making more films.

I haven't heard anything. I very much doubt its anything like the 1999 deal--which was basically the best distribution deal in history. This one is probably more along the lines of your standard deal. It will probably only be in theatres for three weeks too; Journey 2 comes out the same week and has to share some 3D screens, and then the next week Ghost Rider comes out, which takes away more screens. Lorax comes out the next week, which should take away any last remaining screens, and John Carter is out the week after, which will dominate 3D screens for the rest of the month.

I didn't realize he was that old.

And I agree with bkev. Some of their releases were botched--Citizen Kane because it was an early experiment, and occasionally some other film like Star Wars but most of that is the fault of Lucas--but overall their results are excellent, and the proof of that is seen whenever you watch an old movie; most classic film restorations are by Lowry, and they usually look great.

Yeah, it would have to do close to $200 million to match 1997 dollars, which it won't even come close to, not even half. I'm expecting that it will probably do about the same as ESB/ROTJ in 1997, which is about $50-70 million, but these things are hard to predict. The only competition it has is Journey 2, so it will definitely take the number one spot on opening weekend--maybe $30 million--and the next week will probably stay within the top 5 as Ghost Rider comes out, and then it'll trickle down until Lorax and John Carter force it out of 3D theatres once March comes around. It really all depends on the strength of that opening weekend; if it does only something like $20 million, which is more than the number one movie right now actually, then it might be considered a bomb, but it could easily have a $40 million or $50 million opening if the fans come out in droves. I think it's too hard to predict, and it's quite a gamble on the part of Lucas.

 I've seen people claim the 3D conversion itself costs as high as $30 million (the cost of TF3 3D), although going by the rule of thumb for conversion costs (100 grand per minute) and comparable to other 3D films it should be more like $15 million; Lucas himself stated earlier this year that the conversion of ANH had already far surpassed the $11 million budget of the original film. So at a highball $30 million Lucasfilm actually might have a hard time turning a profit unless this is another 1997-level box office surprise. And it won't be. No one cares about Episode I like they did the original, and even though there are millions of prequel fans out there, I sincerely doubt there are enough to make this a huge blockbuster again. And if this thing only finishes with $50 million, which would put the film as a loss if the conversion itself is $30 million, the whole series will probably be cancelled since I imagine Episode II will do about 60% of Episode I's business. And there won't be a home video market to pick up the slack either, since this already is on BD.

Personally, I have some doubts about whether this 3D series will survive because of this, if they just put the OT out first it would cover the costs of the weaker entries (prequels), but instead they are going about it  backwards and only putting out the money-makers if the weak films do strong money, which seems counter-intuitive. Each prequel film has to approach the $80 million mark to be considered a huge success, and that's not likely to happen, even if it was the summer. I guess we will know by next sunday. Either it has a weak debut at $20 million and Lucasfilm loses a huge amount of money and the 3D series gets the axe or it has a strong $40 million opening and Lucasfilm has to wait one more week to see if it has legs. Because it could easily have a huge opening weekend and still be a bomb if it has massive drop off. Green Hornet debuted at $33 million last January, which was really good, but then it made almost no money at all after that. People just don't go to the movies in February unless it's really special. The 1997 OT releases are the only real instances of a January/February blockbuster in modern history. But maybe Lucasfilm's sales numbers for prequel stuff is higher than we think. I mean look at the BD sales. It's always tough to gauge prequel sales. And it's also tough to gauge Lucas' bluff--how successful will it have to be to get the others? Just a little, or really huge? Because if it comes out next sunday with $30 million it will be a little, but is that enough? Was Lucasfilm only doing this because they assumed it would be huge? If so, a healthy profit may still be seen as a failure.

Most predictions from the pros that I've just googled peg it at around $65 million total, but this seems high since they peg the opening week at around $25 million--I don't think it will have very strong staying power. If it does $25 in week one, it will do $15 in week two and less than $10 in week three, and then it's gone, and those are generous fall-off predictions, and based on that math it puts it at around $45 million when it bows out, about the same as Beauty and the Beast 3D that's just about to leave theatres this week. I'm expecting it to do better business than that, but I think the film will have basically made all its money by the end of the second weekend. Luckily for Lucasfilm the high priced ticket sales will inflate the numbers.

Actually, one thing I discovered was the whole divorce=TOD thing doesn't work. Lucas got divorced after TOD had been filmed--let alone written! He was flying to the set in Sri Lanka while Marcia was editing ROTJ in the spring of 1983. The shooting script was locked by April 18, 1983, when cameras started rolling on the bridge scene, with Lucas there manning the B-camera--whereas the divorce wasn't even announced until June, and then didn't get rolling legally until some time after. In fact, TOD may have even caused the divorce, rather than the other way around--Lucas at this time was swearing that ROTJ would be his last film and that he would finally settle down and be a family man, yet here he is jetting around the world to south Asia making another Indiana Jones film before Jedi is even done cutting! It very well could have been a deal-sealer, knowing it would continue to be made into 1984; Lucas once again was saying one thing but then doing the complete opposite.

The violent tone probably does reflect the unsettled state of mind Lucas was in at the time though, due to his marriage about to unravel and his general unpleasantness about the direction his life had headed in. But I think the link between his divorce and TOD is overstated by him. He probably just associates them because the divorce occurred at the time the film was being made, but the dark tone and violence of TOD was decided as far back as 1982 when the script was first written, and it was already committed to celluloid when the divorce finally was decided.

Yeah, they were interviewing me because they were sent a review copy a while back and they needed an expert for a piece on the re-release. I would have asked to pass a message on to George but they had already spoken to him by the time they got to me. One day I will speak with that man! Or at least at him, as his personality goes.

The issue of Lucas changing the films would be irrelevant, nothing more than a bizarre, sometimes-interesting-sometimes-stupid side-story, which is always how I have treated it. It is what it is, and what that is is up to you to decide, but it ultimately is a separate issue from the OOT one. Lucas adding Jar Jar Binks to Return of the Jedi doesn't mean he can't also release the original. Even though there is a big anti-Lucas movement, that can sometimes be a big hindrance to us because people confuse one issue for another. I'm sure there are lots of people who would love to see the OOT but feel compelled to defend Lucas because people bash Jar Jar Binks, or the prequels, or whatever. It really makes no sense, and we bring it on ourselves by confusing the issues. It really sucks when an otherwise good piece on why the OOT needs to be restored gets ruined by someone who loses focus on the issue and starts putting emphasis on the crappiness of the prequels. I mean, yes, but at a certain point you also start alienating Lucas/prequel fans who--while not necessarily sharing any or many views with us, or even liking the films for the same reasons--nonetheless would be useful allies. While the fandom is and always will be divided over the prequels, almost every single person out there would say the originals should be preserved, and we tend to lose some useful activist because of their partisan politics. You could argue that is their fault--and I would agree--but in real life that doesn't accomplish much for either of us.

7FN said:

Crazy idea time: perhaps us fans should club together, take out a fullpage ad in Variety.

This actually piqued my interest. I wonder how much money it would take to do this. But surely they only allow recognized representatives in (eg. studios, MPAA, famous directors, etc.). It would be a brilliant coup if this were somehow possible though. We could easily fundraise whatever fee they wanted.

You know, I'm kind of kicking myself right now. I just had an interview with The Hollywood Reporter and we talked about the SE/OT thing and I didn't really mention the site. Would have given it a lot of legitimacy if Hollywood Reporter mentioned it in next week's issue. I guess these are the things you learn the hard way.

Surprise! I'm alive and well. Just been having some time off (mostly) to focus on other things. Now that I've gotten stuff sorted out I'll be back as regularly scheduled. Sorry if I worried anyone. I'm currently slogging through two months of unreplied emails and such. If you tried to get ahold of me and I never got back to you, don't take it too personally.

The I'm Leaving thread. :p

PS there is a thread for that in off-topic.

Okay, I guess you should cancel your OT.com account and bid us goodbye then.