A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Someone on Quora asks: Why would Disney trust Kathleen Kennedy after the way the recent Star Wars movies were received? My reply: Well, it would be  most ungracious  if Bob Iger and Alan Horn fire Kathleen Kennedy after producing three of four financially successful films in a series that its creator, George Lucas, had once declared would consist only of the six “Tragedy of Darth Vader” Episodes (and, later, those six films  plus  the  Star Wars: The Clone Wars  series). As of this writing, the first two installments of the  Star Wars  Sequel Trilogy ( Star Wars: The Force Awakens  and  Star Wars: The Last Jedi ) have earned $$3.4 billion worldwide.  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,  earned $1.056 billion. The only underperformer in the new post-George Lucas “era of Disney” Lucasfilm slate of movies in the  Star Wars  franchise is  Solo: A Star Wars Story,  which made “only” $392 million. Solo’s  box office flop was a given, at least in hindsight, considering that it followe

Superman was also released as a "Christmas movie" in 1978. It didn't change the "true meaning of Christmas." © 1978 DC Comics and Warner Bros.  Someone on Quora asks: Do you think that Disney's plan to release Star Wars movies around Christmas is to make the holiday about Star Wars instead of the true meaning of Christmas? Hardly. Traditionally, all of the major movie studios, including Paramount Pictures, Columbia, Universal, MGM, and Disney’s newest acquisition, 20th Century Fox, have  always  released major movies during the December holiday season. This is nothing new, and it’s not, as you suggest, a marketing strategy centered around one movie franchise. There are several reasons behind this strategy, but the biggest ones are: The holiday season is when most businesses usually make the most money Children and adolescents are on winter break The last quarter of the year (October, November, and December) is when most studios releas

© 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation Would audiences be interested if Disney-Lucasfilm remade Star Wars Episodes IV, V and VI with modern film-making techniques? Judging from the reaction of many  Star Wars  fans to the changes that franchise creator and founder/retired CEO of Lucasfilm, George Lucas, made when he decided to improve 1970s-era special effects shots that he felt fell short of his vision with late 1990s-era CGI effects for the 20th Anniversary Special Editions, I’d say…”No.” The  Star Wars Trilogy  is already one of the most “tinkered with” movie series in the history of the industry. Since 1977,  Star Wars  alone has undergone many adjustments, ranging from necessary fixes to its audio track, accidental deletion of scenes and re-insertion of said scenes, a 1981 title change from  Star Wars  to  Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope,  a tweak that was first previewed in 1979 when Ballantine Books published Carol Titleman’s  The Art of Star Wars  and officiall

Did Solo: A Star Wars Story prove that people are losing interest in Star Wars? No.  Solo’ s failure at the box office  doesn’t  prove that people are losing interest in  Star Wars. If  Solo: A Star Wars Story  does prove anything, it is that: Bob Iger, the Chairman of The Walt Disney Company, erred badly by greenlighting too many  Star Wars  films back-to-back Lucasfilm erred by hiring Phil Lord and Christopher Miller in the first place, considering that  Solo  co-writer Lawrence Kasdan did not like their approach to the material Releasing  Solo: A Star Wars Story  on May 25, 2018 was a bad idea, even though it was meant to commemorate  Star Wars’  41st Anniversary Even worse, releasing  Solo  without giving much thought to mounting an effective publicity campaign, and on a date that was close to another Disney-owned studio’s blockbuster film’s premiere, was a bad move Star Wars  is still one of the most popular franchises in existence, and it has survived through

Are the rumors that Disney is buying Captain Marvel tickets and there being many empty theaters showing Captain Marvel true? Absolutely not. Those rumors, are just that: rumors. Malicious rumors, dumb rumors, and definitely childish rumors. Let’s look at the numbers, shall we? Per  Box Office Mojo:  In 10 days since its release,  Captain Marvel  has earned  $264,884,063  in the United States alone (as of yesterday, anyway). That’s a bit more than  Star Wars  took in its year-long run in 1977–78,  without adjusting for inflation.  ($220 million, more or less, in 1977 dollars). There’s no way on Earth that a studio, even one as ginormous as Buena Vista (the distributor for everything Disney), is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying tickets to its own product. Seriously. The film cost between $152–175 million to  make:  do you really believe that Disney investors are going to get a nice payoff if the film’s costs ballooned to some $400 million because the s

What do people think the Star Wars franchise would be like if Disney had not bought Star Wars? Before I give you my answer to the question at hand, let me first make an observation. It seems to me that  Star Wars  fans have no understanding of how corporate ownership of a media company works. The impression that I get when I see questions such as “What do people think the Star Wars franchise would be like if Disney had not bought Star Wars?” is that the persons that ask queries like this have a huge chip on their shoulder about George Lucas’s retirement and subsequent sale of his company, Lucasfilm Limited (and all of its subsidiaries and intellectual properties) to The Walt Disney Company. The Walt Disney Company (aka “Disney”) owns a large number of subsidiary companies which enjoy a great deal of autonomy. I don’t have time to name them all, but here are the most prominent Disney subsidiaries: The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) Marvel Entertainment (which includes M

If someone actually bought Star Wars from Disney, would Canon and other things change once again? Sure,  if  there was a company or individual with enough money to buy Lucasfilm Ltd. and the  Star Wars  franchise from The Walt Disney Company, and if  Bob Iger and the stockholders were willing to sell either the franchise or Lucasfilm. Whoever owned the  Star Wars  brand would then decide: What “canonicity” means under the new regime What new content would be created, in what format, and which venue (theaters, television, or Internet) Whether or not to re-release existing movies in their current form, or (in the case of the Original Trilogy) their original (as released) editions Which video game companies would get licenses to create new games Whether or not licensed printed media original works (novels, comics, anthologies) are canonical After all, that’s what ownership entails. If The Walt Disney Company had not been given independence from what the previous owner. Geor