George Lucas To Quit Movie Business 520
CaroKann writes, "Variety is reporting that George Lucas is getting out of the movie business. Mr. Lucas laments that today's big-budget franchise films are too expensive and too risky. He believes American audiences are deserting their movie going habits permanently. Instead of making major films, Lucasfilm will instead focus on television. Lucas states that for the price of one $200 million feature movie, 'I can make 50-60 two hour movies' that are 'pay-per-view and downloadable.' Notably, he does not plan on distributing movies online, calling online distribution a 'rathole.'"
"calling online distribution a 'rathole'" (Score:3, Informative)
Wouldn't that make all of us rats then? Is that a bad thing?
Wonderful summary (Score:1, Informative)
The rathole statement... (Score:5, Informative)
He is saying, "We do not want to rush into this and have the method we chose to enter the online realm explode on us." Online movie distribution is in its infancy. We have already seen the Wal-Mart/iTunes debacle. He is simply making a methaphorical statement to describe that they are being cautious, but he does not openly say, "Online distribution is a stupid."
So, this one again proves that you must always RTFA.
Re:What I want to know is.. (Score:5, Informative)
attack of clones 120 million
revenge of the sith 113 million
king kong 207 million
alexander 155 million
final fantasy 137 million
pirates of the carribean 143 million
pearl harbour 132 million
its not like he's spending more than anyone else, especially considering the intense special effects.
There's a whole website for Lucas Bashing (Score:2, Informative)
Yep, http://www.hanshootsfirst.org/ [hanshootsfirst.org]
Re:I sense a confusion in the Force... (Score:3, Informative)
While I would not consider downloading a movie on the internet right now (too much hassle, too low quality), I have no problem downloading movies on my cable box as the system is very well developed, efficent, and goes straight to my television.
Re:Ho Hum (Score:5, Informative)
More like until he figures it out. Either way, he apparently realizes the distributors (iTunes and whatnot) are making all the money, and not the producers. I'd have to agree with him that at this time online sales of movies aren't making anyone rich (besides iTunes).
Re:What I want to know is.. (Score:5, Informative)
Explosions are really, really expensive. A film crew is the size of a mid-sized company. Sit through the credits some time, and see the names of the script girl and the second second assistant director and the backup plasterer. Each camera takes several people (camera operator, loader, focus puller, and sometimes more), and for an explosion you're going to have to catch it from several angles because otherwise all that work ends up as only a fraction of a second of screen time. They call cost money, not just in salary but in insurance, craft service, studio rental, the rental of the camera equipment they're holding, etc.
And every single one of them is sitting around while the explosives rigger is making 200% certain that none of them get hurt when the explosion goes off. And another 200% certain that the explosion is going to do the right thing the first time, because otherwise you'll have to start from scratch.
It's literally tens of thousands of dollars to make even something simple blow up. If you want something big to blow up, it'll cost you a few hundred thousand. Add a few dozen explosions into the movie, and suddenly you're talking about real money.
If they're on location, they have to have bathrooms, and hauling a porta-john into the desert isn't cheap, either. It's not any one thing that makes it pricey. It's eight million little things.
Plus the eight million little things that go into the digital effects (light matching, wire frame artists, shading artists, data center ops, plus a studio to put them all in, usually close to the studio which means the high-rent district).
Why bother? If you don't do all of that, your movie comes off looking cheap. Scrimp on the continuity girl, and the lack of continuity becomes glaring to the audience. It works for indie movies, which the audience expects to look cheap, but your summer blockbuster is going to look corny, and audiences won't enjoy it if it looks corny.
Lucas figures that the small screen is cheaper. The low resolution means that makeup that used to take two hours now takes only half an hour. Sets are built to a far lower level of detail; even where the audience can see the difference [e.g. Firefly vs. Serenity] you have lower expectations. (It used to be that you could save money shooting with three cameras rather than one, which means you can do in one take what used to take three, but these days quality dramas are usually shot movie-style with just one camera.)
It can all be done cheaper than it is. As in any organization a lot of money goes to waste between the cracks. Better organization means less wasted time and unnecessary equipment, but it's like at your office: you have a spare printer or ethernet cable sitting around not doing anything. It cost money to buy, but if you need it you'll be glad you have it, especially if the lack of it drives the entire company to a standstill. When those resources are people, though, it gets pricey fast.
Re:Ho Hum (Score:4, Informative)
Motivation: As with all new products, Apple wanted iTMS to become popular and accepted. For any new technology to successfuly enter a market or create a new market, price and perceived quality are usually the most important factors. A cheaper better mouse trap with a pinch of good marketing will usually do well. Therefore Apple has an incentive to keep price as low as they can go.
Means: It is CHEAP to distribute digitally. Therefore Apple CAN sell for cheaper than the legacy content distribution moguls.
Note as evidence for at least the movies and TV episodes the recent Walmart vs. Apple articles [bloggingstocks.com], the articles usually contain some analysis that shows Apple undercutting Walmart's prices even though Walmart is selling new release DVDs at a loss! Trust me when I say that if anyone sells for less than Walmart (even if the products are not exactly the same), their profit margin is minimal. Then for music, even though this is not the greatest source, it's just one article of many that tell about the pennies made per song purchase on iTMS [businessweek.com].
Re:What I want to know is.. (Score:5, Informative)
Still, Lucas is right that TV is cheaper to produce than movies. It is astonishing that even an expensive show like Lost runs only $3-5 million per episode, even though it's 1/2 to 1/3 the length of a full movie. Some of the difference is set-up costs, but even the pilot, where they had to put out all of the one-time costs, cost a measley $10 million, and that was full of fancy effects and explosions.
Most Lost episodes are only that expensive because they involve location shooting in Hawaii, which is expensive, and it's done to keep the location secret, which makes it more expensive. They do most of the back-story and interiors in LA, and they end up flying people back and forth. It's amazing that they can do that. But they make up for it with clever management: they're shooting several episodes in parallel, and they don't fly people back and forth to Hawaii every single week.
It takes less than two weeks to shoot primary photography on an episode of Lost, compared to 30 to as much as 60 days for a movie. It's not really that there are fewer takes, although there sometimes are, but it takes so much less time to get each take ready. Standing around a set waiting for the light guys to remove every single damn shadow is incredibly tedious. (People rarely wear hats on TV because it's hard to light your face properly. They even forbid certain hair styles in TV shows; a movie director expects more flexibility.) And God forbid you should have to do it outside, where the lights look completely different at 2 PM as at 6 PM, even with the supplemental light. Audiences notice that in movies when they don't on TV.
The effects are cheaper on TV. The resolution is higher on HDTV than on NTSC, but it's still lower than full movie resolution. The actual pixel content may not be much higher, but the color reproduction on film is better, and it would take many pixels to compensate for that. The better the final picture, the more time it takes to make it look realistic: you have to have an artist shade every single pixel, or it ends up looking like the Babylon 5 effects. (Miniatures are easier, but not as flexible.)
What effects they do shoot on Lost would look cheesy on a movie screen. Audiences wouldn't pay $10 a seat for them. They expect more from a movie. Even where they do have good effects, you're often seeing less than you think you are. A movie is expected to be a big-budget affair, and producers say "yes" to a movie when they'd say "work around it" to the same request for a TV show.
That'll save Lucas a lot of money, and arguably we'll get better work. The man DOES know how to tell a good story, when he doesn't let the effects take up his whole life. Sometimes less is more, and the work-arounds make for better drama.
Re:You must love the duck (Score:4, Informative)
*blink* ... *blink*
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *gasp* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *gasp* HAHAHAHAHA
Value? That movie was unending crap from the first frame to the last. The story was the worst gibberish I've seen outside of a Troma picture (and they are trying to be stupid). All it had was special effects and over-choriographed sword fights. Those do not make a good movie. What those make is eye-candy. Distraction from the fact that there is nothing below the surface.
The fact of the matter is that Lucas got lucky with Star Wars (the first one). The rest of movies introduced every newer plot holes that invalidated the first film. And the prequals? Garbage.
Let's take a look at the Lucas track record, shall we?
- THX-1138 - Not a great movie. Good ideas. No budget. Kinda boring. But worth seeing.
- American Graffiti - His best movie. Based on his life in Fresno, CA.
- Star Wars - His most popular movie. Good for its day. Has not aged well, however. (Not a good idea to go ten years between viewings. You start to notice the weak points.)
- The 'Star Wars' Holiday Special - A portant of things to come. The horror! The horror!
- Empire Strikes Back - Some argue that it's the best of the originals. I disagree due to the contradictions with Star Wars that were introduced. Technically it's better than Star Wars.
- Raiders Of The Lost Ark - My favorite of his, and the best movie he made with Spielberg.
- Return of The Jedi - Could have been great. Took the easy (and incestiously revolting) way out of the love triangle he setup in Empire. Loses major points for Vader being such a Nancy.
- Temple of Doom - Well, he only wrote the story, so he only gets half the demerits for this steaming pile of garbage.
- Ewok (anything) - Why does Lucas hate us?
- Willow - Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I can't tell who should be more ashamed by this turd, Lucas for writing it or Ron Howard for directing it.
- Last Crusade - Not really his movie, but it could have been great. Instead it's just okay.
- Episode 1 - The man has lost his mind. Hundreds of millions of dollars for what amounts to a bedtime story he told to his kids. A bucket of vomit splashed across all that was Star Wars.
- Episode 2 - For a brief moment there was hope of a good story in there. But just for a moment. It was pissed away on lame dialog, over-done special effects and the worst love story ever written.
- Episode 3 - This movie did have one positive thing going for it: after it was done the pain was over. The patient was dead and we can all go home and have punch and pie and try to forget about it.
You'll note that I left out Howard The Duck and everything else that he was only the producer or executive producer on. all he did with those is write the checks to get them made.Re:Interesting that you say that... (Score:2, Informative)
Pretty much for everyone but the actors and grips, a TV series is an overtime, year round job.
Re:Alas, (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately the guy who made the Clone Wars shorts so good, Genndy Tartakovsky, is working for Henson Productions on the sequel to the Dark Crystal. And they are going with CGI instead of traditional/CGI hybrid like the original shorts.
They are working on the new CGI series...in the Phillippines. Not necessarily known as a great hotbed of animation talent. Why they didn't enlist a Japanese studio like Production IG or Madhouse or Sunrise is beyond me.
Oh yeah, with regard to the live-action series, set between Episode III and Episode IV: it's still in pre-production. Not a soul has been cast.