Quote:
Originally Posted by
kdog750 
4 billion? If Lucas hadn't stunk up the place with those prequels he could have gotten 20 billion. Those prequels have to remain the three worst films of all time.
This deal is most certainly
not about the revenue potential of the originals or the prequel movies, because those are relatively small. The Episode 1 3D re-release did not do very much business. It's about the future franchise and the revenue potential of future movies and perhaps more importantly (from a business standpoint), the merchandising and character exploitation opportunities that emanate from those movies. Disney will exploit this to their fullest extent. That means you'll see an animated version of Star Wars geared to 8-year-olds as well as the regular sequels. It means you might see an entire theme park at Disney World (or perhaps a completely new separate park) dedicated to Star Wars. It means you might even see a "Star Wars, The Musical" on Broadway. It means Disney will gear up the licensing. No one would have paid $20 billion regardless of whether the PT was good or bad. Because future revenues for the existing films are in the tens of $millions at most.
I agree with those who believe that the future of this franchise will rest on who Disney choses to direct and write the sequels. It will also rest on whether Kathleen Kennedy, the new President of Lucasfilm, feels allegiance to George and his story treatments or whether she decides to make her own mark by choosing better directors/writers. Although, having said that, George seems so relaxed now, I'd bet that his treatments are actually pretty good (as long as he doesn't produce, direct or write the actual dialog, which he's not doing anyway).
The fanboys will be unhappy no matter who they choose because there are those who only care about dumb action and those who care about an intelligent story that has meaning and that works on multiple levels. I think the Star Wars franchise needs the latter, but probably won't get it. Disney sometimes does things right and sometimes not. While certainly not an intellectual film, the first "Iron Man" struck a perfect balance between comic book action and wry cynicism, largely thanks to Robert Downey. "John Carter" was a disaster, although I liked it better than most people did. Personally, I'd love to see a Star Wars with the detail and intelligence of "Prometheus", but that won't happen either and many fans hate the writing of Damon Lindelof (although I love his work). But imagine a character (whether the offspring of the Skywalker line, the Solo line or a villain) with the strength of the characters played by Noomi Rapace and you get an idea of what a future Star Wars might look like if done correctly. In fact, imagine Robert Downey as the wise-cracking offspring of Han Solo. I'm sure some people would hate those ideas, but they work perfectly for me and actually would get me excited about a future sequel.
My fear is that the next sequel will simply rehash the less interesting aspects of the original story arc with new characters. We don't need to see another battle between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance. That would be pretty boring. We need to see something completely new. They'll probably just have his kids or Solo's kids become Jedi and fight some new Sith or other such threat with the continuity provided by R2D2 and C3PO. But who are they going to get to be a villain who is as much fun as Vader was, even though Vader never really made any logical sense.
