Lucas has put his live action Star Wars series on hold due to the difficulty of doing episodes at a tenth of the cost. I just have this funny feeling that by 2011-2012 that he will anounce the idea of a live action series is dead and will start making more films. Whats your views on this?
Star Wars : live action series or more movies?
- Thread starter borgomatic
- Start date
A live action SW series should be a half dozen episodes with a self-contained story, not a 12-20 episode/year series with an indefinite run.
I'm sorry, but I've always thought the idea of a live action SW series to be a bit ridiculous. It would have to have a very high budget in order to be anything but cheesy looking, and high budgets kill modern sci-fi series unless the ratings are blockbuster. Despite what some people around here might believe, a SW series does not have the same guaranteed success with a mainstream audience as the movies do.
But you know Lucas got it in his head making prequels, "Hey, we could do an entire series using virtual sets and virtual props and no-name actors and computer generated aliens and within 5-10 years it will cost next to NOTHING to produce!".
Which is all a bunch of crap. Just stick with the Clone Wars cartoon or make another one set in a different era. How's that any different from a virtual series with a handful of real actors playing parts in a computer generated universe anyway?
I'm sorry, but I've always thought the idea of a live action SW series to be a bit ridiculous. It would have to have a very high budget in order to be anything but cheesy looking, and high budgets kill modern sci-fi series unless the ratings are blockbuster. Despite what some people around here might believe, a SW series does not have the same guaranteed success with a mainstream audience as the movies do.
But you know Lucas got it in his head making prequels, "Hey, we could do an entire series using virtual sets and virtual props and no-name actors and computer generated aliens and within 5-10 years it will cost next to NOTHING to produce!".
Which is all a bunch of crap. Just stick with the Clone Wars cartoon or make another one set in a different era. How's that any different from a virtual series with a handful of real actors playing parts in a computer generated universe anyway?
If Lucas abandons the idea of a live action series here are my bets on what he will do on the big screen. He had talked at on point of doing old republic movies; set 1000 years before The Phantom Menace. Movies based on the Expanded Universe novels(They would have to be set 25 years or so after ROTJ to use the same actors with their offspring ;unless he recasts or goes the reboot route). I personally think we wouldnt have the balls to do a reboot of the franchise though. I also suppose he could also throw something at us from left field(the founding of the sith order perhaps).
I also heard a rumour at one point that his rights to the franchise were not indefinate. That 20th centurty fox would have the right to the francise at some future date. I think it was 2015. That could change things a lot with the direction the franchise could take in the future.
I think you should stop listening to Supershadow.
Dont know to whom or what you are refering to UIster. I thought the idea of this sites blog was to discuss ideas and opinions without being insulting or rude.
Both!!!! 
But it really depends more on content. What I really want is the immediate post-ROTJ trilogy (following the novels or otherwise; I'm about to read the Thrawn series and I'm curious whether they'd be the best basis for the story).
Recasting the principles a la Star Trek is fine with me, taking into account the pitfalls of attemping such a thing. But if they could successfully recast Spock, one of the most iconic characters of all time, then even Han should be do-able.
If movies are the best format for this story (relatively short, lots of visuals/action) then movies it is. But if it's TV-worthy (longer and more complicated, maybe bringing in the next generation, more talking, character development and complex plotting vs. visuals/action) then TV is the way to go.
The knee-jerk answer for Star Wars is always movies, but if the story tries to deal with Dark Side threats to either Luke or Leia, TV might be the better medium, because to pull something like that off convincingly would require some fancy writing. They both seem to have strong defenses in their personalities - Luke is too pure of heart and Leia is too practical and savvy to be easy Dark Side prey. Ideally, you could build that storyline over years and have a chance to sell it to the audience that way. Ditto for complex and believable political or mystical themes. A post-ROTJ saga with the depth of DS9 would be my absolute dream come true.
I don't think anyone should assume Star Wars on TV is an automatic money maker. If that's true, then why isn't there a new Star Trek series being planned in the wake of the movie's big success? TV and movies are two very different businesses, and I hate to say it, but CBS is right not to assume that Star Trek would do any better on TV now just because the movie did great.
Anyway, if you're just going to do 12 hours, why not telescope it to 6 hours, throw a big movie budget behind it, and turn it into a movie trilogy? If you really need 12 hours, make it two trilogies.
With 12 hours, you lose the strength of TV - that you can tell a grand, epic story, yet with sophistication and complexity, that spans a hundred or more hours of storytelling. The reverse philosophy, where the story is relatively short and uncomplex, belongs on the big screen.
I think that could work in theory. But with the PT Lucas has demonstrated that he is not the guy to pull it off anymore. It needs someone who knows how to cast those unknowns very well (once upon a time, Mark, Carrie and Harrison were unknowns, too
) and write a heck of a story.
But it really depends more on content. What I really want is the immediate post-ROTJ trilogy (following the novels or otherwise; I'm about to read the Thrawn series and I'm curious whether they'd be the best basis for the story). Recasting the principles a la Star Trek is fine with me, taking into account the pitfalls of attemping such a thing. But if they could successfully recast Spock, one of the most iconic characters of all time, then even Han should be do-able.
If movies are the best format for this story (relatively short, lots of visuals/action) then movies it is. But if it's TV-worthy (longer and more complicated, maybe bringing in the next generation, more talking, character development and complex plotting vs. visuals/action) then TV is the way to go.
The knee-jerk answer for Star Wars is always movies, but if the story tries to deal with Dark Side threats to either Luke or Leia, TV might be the better medium, because to pull something like that off convincingly would require some fancy writing. They both seem to have strong defenses in their personalities - Luke is too pure of heart and Leia is too practical and savvy to be easy Dark Side prey. Ideally, you could build that storyline over years and have a chance to sell it to the audience that way. Ditto for complex and believable political or mystical themes. A post-ROTJ saga with the depth of DS9 would be my absolute dream come true.
That's a sure sign that we dodged a bullet. Ron Moore did a fine job with BSG on what is almost certainly a smaller budget than Lucas would have to play with. I don't want a Star Wars series on TV that's going to depend wholly on action and battles. Good character writing and plotting is not expensive, but clearly Lucas isn't even thinking in those terms. The TV medium can do character and plotting better than movies - that's its strength - so anything written for TV must be written for its strengths, not as a cheap and dragged out type of movie.
The TV biz is hostile to the miniseries format nowadays. Not exactly sure why, but probably because you need to amortize the start-up costs of a new production by extending it over as many episodes as possible.
I don't think anyone should assume Star Wars on TV is an automatic money maker. If that's true, then why isn't there a new Star Trek series being planned in the wake of the movie's big success? TV and movies are two very different businesses, and I hate to say it, but CBS is right not to assume that Star Trek would do any better on TV now just because the movie did great.
Anyway, if you're just going to do 12 hours, why not telescope it to 6 hours, throw a big movie budget behind it, and turn it into a movie trilogy? If you really need 12 hours, make it two trilogies.
With 12 hours, you lose the strength of TV - that you can tell a grand, epic story, yet with sophistication and complexity, that spans a hundred or more hours of storytelling. The reverse philosophy, where the story is relatively short and uncomplex, belongs on the big screen.
I think that could work in theory. But with the PT Lucas has demonstrated that he is not the guy to pull it off anymore. It needs someone who knows how to cast those unknowns very well (once upon a time, Mark, Carrie and Harrison were unknowns, too
) and write a heck of a story.
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Dave Filoni was asked by a kid at the Clone Wars celebration V panel if there was going to be another Clone Wars movie to which he responded that while that would be really cool they're really focusing on the series right now. As far as I've ever read about the live action series is that there are scripts written and as the original poster stated it has been put on hold according to him due to cost reasons. I wouldn't be surprised if we got an announcement down the road in a year or two of another CGI movie...perhaps an EU movie, other than that aside from the comedy series and the Clone Wars I don't see any other projects coming from LucasFilm Star Wars related.
I'd like to see what he had in mind for the TV show, but I think he only wants to do it on the cheap and space based TV shows aren't cheap anymore.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR11...&cs=1&query=clone+and+wars&display=clone+wars
http://www.variety.com/article/VR11...&cs=1&query=clone+and+wars&display=clone+wars
I want nothing more in the Star Wars universe. Lucas has already screwed the pooch too badly & killed almost everything that made it entertaining in the first place. I really don't care to see him make it even worse.
Space based TV shows don't exist unless they're cheap enough for TV. BSG managed to be on TV, so what's Lucas' problem? Well we all know the answer to that - that he wouldn't be able to pull off the superior writing and casting that allowed BSG to transcend its limited budget.
The solution is for Lucas to turn the project over to people who can provide the low-cost quality of acting and writing so that they don't need to rely on the crutch of big-budget SFX. But Lucas will never admit that the biggest problem with Star Wars is him.
Yeah, agreed. I definitely think a JJ Abrams or Josh Whedon could have done something amazing with the TV format, but I just don't see how Lucas and his team could have.
Even if he moved the story to the fun and exciting rebellion years, he still would have found a way to make it as dreary and dull as the prequels. lol
Jeez, no kidding. I saw a little bit of RotS during the prequel marathon yesterday, and so much of the damn movie was animated I almost thought I was watching an episode of the Clone Wars instead.
Ugh. With Lucas and his ever-shrinking universe, an Old Republic movie would be about Clyde Skywalker, Jack Solo, Maria Organa, and Frank Kenobi.
We'd get to see Fred Palpatine start down the road to the Dark Side. One of them would wind up being the builder of R2-D2. We'd see the birth of Yoda. Comic antics by Maracca the Wookiee, who's suffering from a bad case of mange.
Pass.
The BSG comparison is the best. If Lucas can let go and let somebody else tell the stories that we all know are there (there's 20 damn years between ROTS and ANH and there's a lot of potential for stories there), than the storytelling can overshadow the budget. Not to mention the fact that Lucas could well afford to give them double the budget BSG had.
I'd love to see a good 5-7 year series about the Rebellion era, maybe even jump around in that time period to tell different stories.
But I'd also love to see more movies, the Old Republic era, the origin of the Sith, even the Young Yoda adventures idea that I thought I read about a few years ago would all be interesting to see.
I'd love to see a good 5-7 year series about the Rebellion era, maybe even jump around in that time period to tell different stories.
But I'd also love to see more movies, the Old Republic era, the origin of the Sith, even the Young Yoda adventures idea that I thought I read about a few years ago would all be interesting to see.
I do prefer the aesthetic of the PT - with heavily animated but realistic environments and alien characters, and live-action actors for the humanoid roles. What I'd change is the casting, directing, writing and underlying philosophy of the stories - basically, all the substance
. I'd keep the atmospherics - the visuals and of course the music - those are the parts that work.
If Lucas does more movies I'm thinking I'd think they'd take place long in the past. I hope he does 'em.
Everything in this post is 100% wrong. Or backasswards.
Fox only has very limited rights to SW, which are pretty much limited to distribution, and some merchandising. These rights will soon expire, and revert back to Lucas, who pretty much holds all other rights to the Star Wars universe. It's his baby. Period.
$1 million per episode? Double that is realistic.
Back in the mid 90's, it was taking $800 grand to $1 million an episode to do something like Sliders ($1.25 million for each of the season three episodes, but there were several people fired for waste at the end of that). Inflation has happened since then.
To put it further in perspective, Universal had a plan in 1999 to do Sliders season six for about $500,000 per episode, but they actually got into trouble with the unions for that one (doing it at that price would have allegedly required one union guy doing the job of three or more union guys).
