New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode VII

[ALF]

"Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm made a special announcement earlier today at CinemaCon in Las Vegas revealing that they will be releasing a new Star Wars film EVERY summer after the initial release of Star Wars: Episode VII. According to ComingSoon, the studio explained that the upcoming releases will alternate between the new trilogy, which will have its first entry directed by J.J. Abrams, and the highly-anticipated standalone films that are set to follow individual characters within the expansive Star Wars universe created by George Lucas."

More here:
http://www.examiner.com/article/new-star-wars-movies-will-arrive-every-summer-following-episode-vii

They might be able to pull it off, but I'm incredibly skeptical about the 2015 release. Are they kidding? That's barely two years from now. I just can't see it materializing this soon.

 

[Ethros]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

They might be able to pull it off, but I'm incredibly skeptical about the 2015 release. Are they kidding? That's barely two years from now. I just can't see it materializing this soon.

Hasn't that been known since the Disney takeover was announced? I agree it did seem a bit soon, just hoping they don't just slap any old crap together to get it released.

 

[Mooch]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

Well, if Episode VIII is coming out in 2017, I guess 2015 for Ep VII makes sense. I think they'll have trouble keeping up that pace for long though.

 

[T J]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

Every summer?! WOW! I hope they remember the saying about quality over quantity. But as a sci-fi fan who thinks there is waaay to little sci-fi around these days I'll not complain.

 

[Skywalker]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

Now that we own this product, we must water it down as quickly as possible!

 

[Mooch]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

I can't see John Williams going to be able to write that much music on that kind of schedule. It would be interesting to see some other big composers tackles Star Wars. I hope Williams can do the next trilogy though.

 

[Holdfast]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

Every summer seems too much to me. Every other year would be about right, assuming these movies are made in a normal way.

To do one every summer - and maintain quality - would surely mean:
- either a heavily preplanned story filmed in batches of 2-3 movies back-to-back/concurrently a la LOTR was
- or an anthology approach with varying casts whereby you could overlap schedules/actors with no problem.

Or, I suppose, a blend of the above whereby the "main" story films are every other year and the intervening years have "filler" films focusing on other characters/time periods. That might jive with the other reports we had a while ago about some films focusing on particular OT characters. I haven't been following the rumour mill to know if that's still the plan.

 

[Yoda]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

This is great news. Not for Star Wars fans, but for Red Letter Media fans.

 

[cooleddie74]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

I'm cautiously optimistic, but yeah. The overkill factor concerns me. A new film every single year, and for who knows how long?

Disney: you'd better not screw all of this up. Don't take something a lot of us have cherished since we were old enough to write the alphabet and tie our shoes and run it into the ground because you want to pimp this franchise to death and put out a hundred new BluRays.

 

[Stevil2001]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

Marvel's doing multiple movies per year right now, though, and I'd argue that the Star Wars universe is at least twice as cool as the MCU.

 

[C_Miller]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

This is really no different than the Marvel Cinematic Universe and we've maintained a relatively high level of quality with the worst films being just decent, which is going to get even bigger as time goes on. They're working out two or three movies every year for the foreseeable future culminating in Avengers 2.

I guess if we look at the "Trilogy" films as Avengers and all of the other standalone films as the Marvel solo movies, one per year doesn't really seem that excessive. And it's unlikely that the creative staff will be doing one movie per year, but different creative teams per film (writers, directors, actors, ect) with a few people overseeing the entire project/universe like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I don't think one Star Wars film per year is really that bad when looking at it this way.

 

[C_Miller]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

Disney: you'd better not screw all of this up. Don't take something a lot of us have cherished since we were old enough to write the alphabet and tie our shoes and run it into the ground because you want to pimp this franchise to death and put out a hundred new BluRays.

You mean like Lucas himself?

I just can't picture Disney being any worse than Lucas in this regard. Though if they wanted to release the Original Unaltered Trilogy Remastered on Bluray, I don't think anyone would complain.

 

[cooleddie74]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

If they can recruit different writers and co-writers for a lot of the new films there's less chance of things getting stale and repetitive for the franchise. Fresh blood and new concepts and ideas every year or two would keep the new movies more original and potentially more exciting and reduce the risk of audience burnout from seeing the same-old, same-old every time they walk into a cinema and see the "Star Wars" logo blast onto the screen.

 

[davejames]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

Well I suppose if they can make these standalone films truly feel like separate, unique things, each done in a different style, it might work.

But if it just starts to feel like different episodes of TCW (with different eps focusing on different characters, but all done in the same style) then I think it could get old real fast.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

Episode VII has been in development for a very long time. Much longer than most of us realized. The preproduction is probably done.

I remember Lucas had wanted the prequel trilogy to be released every other year. But computer effects were not advanced enough yet to finish them that fast. Now I think it can be done.

Spin-offs I am sure they'd will be a different style than the main storyline. Direction, music, storytelling.

 

[cooleddie74]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

Disney: you'd better not screw all of this up. Don't take something a lot of us have cherished since we were old enough to write the alphabet and tie our shoes and run it into the ground because you want to pimp this franchise to death and put out a hundred new BluRays.

You mean like Lucas himself?

I just can't picture Disney being any worse than Lucas in this regard. Though if they wanted to release the Original Unaltered Trilogy Remastered on Bluray, I don't think anyone would complain.

I wouldn't argue Lucas didn't stink some things up when making the Prequel Trilogy, but at least it was his creation, he still owned it and hadn't yet handed it over to another media giant to do with as they saw fit. Disney's capable of great filmmaking. They're also capable of complete and utter tripe when all they focus on is disc sales and saturating the market with product.

Time will tell. As I said: cautiously optimistic. But Disney needs to be careful that they don't repeat George's past mistakes or screw up even worse than he could. If Marvel is any indication, we should be alright. But these are also the people who greenlit 101 Dalmatians 2: Patch's London Adventure.

 

[DarthPipes]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

Disney doesn't want to flood the market with Star Wars so having a film every summer is COMPLETELY logical...Star Wars films are meant to be built up to...they're treating it like just another franchise by releasing one every year. It's different than the Marvel movies.Don't get me wrong, I hope they're good. But it is turning Star Wars into just another franchise.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

The people who allowed 101 Dalmatians 2 are no longer at Disney. All those direct to DVD sequels were stopped whn John Lasseter began the head of animation.

 

[cooleddie74]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

Good.

My faith in the Mouse just went up a couple of notches.

 

[C_Miller]

Re: New 'Star Wars' movies will arrive every summer following 'Episode

Disney doesn't want to flood the market with Star Wars so having a film every summer is COMPLETELY logical...Star Wars films are meant to be built up to...they're treating it like just another franchise by releasing one every year. It's different than the Marvel movies.Don't get me wrong, I hope they're good. But it is turning Star Wars into just another franchise.

Hype does not equal good storytelling.

Sure, there's always been a lot of excitement for new Star Wars. It's understandable seeing as Lucas was only able to muster six movies from 1977 to 2005. And yeah, there was a nice event factor that came with each film, but let's not kid ourselves. The event factor did not produce good movies. In fact, the event factor is about all The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones had going for them.

If Disney can produce good Star Wars movies at this pace, then I say let them.