Tag: George Lucas (11-20 of 32)

Oct 31 2012 08:11 PM ET

Will 'Star Wars' memorabilia go up in value? Collectors, auction houses sound off

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Collectors and auction houses immediately perked up their ears upon Tuesday’s announcements that Disney is buying Lucasfilm and a new Star Wars movie is slated for 2015. Will the value of Star Wars items — and especially those hybrid pieces of Disneyland memorabilia advertising Star Wars – go up? Those devoted fans – Star Wars junkies who have clamored after all things Jedi such as figurines, posters, costumes, and yes, lightsabers — voiced their support and skepticism to EW.

“The buzz among both fans and collectors appears pretty unanimous: Excitement! I think a lot of collectors see the acquisition as assurance that the Star Wars property will live a long, healthy life in Disney’s hands, which by extension will keep the rarer and more sought-after pieces in their collections in demand,” said Pete Vilmur, a longtime collector, former senior editor at Lucas Online and co-author of the books The Star Wars Poster Book, Star Wars: The Complete Vader, and The Star Wars Vault: Thirty Years of Treasures from the Lucasfilm Archives. “With Star Wars likely to be experienced at the theme park level, and with new films on deck, there will be a constant stream of new fans and collectors entering the market as soon as nostalgia, and some disposable income, set in. So yeah, there’s a lot to be optimistic about if you’re a Star Wars fan and/or collector!”
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Oct 31 2012 06:21 PM ET

Mark Hamill weighs in on the future of 'Star Wars' -- EXCLUSIVE

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Image Credit: Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images

Tuesday’s news that George Lucas is giving the keys to the Star Wars universe to The Walt Disney Company in a $4.05 billion mega-deal surprised fans around the world, including some famous filmmakers who grew up on the franchise. It even caught a key figure in that universe — Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill — by surprise. Reached by EW, Hamill — who currently does voice work on no fewer than four animated series and will co-star in the upcoming crime thriller Sushi Girl — shared a few thoughts on where Star Wars and its fabled creator go from here now that Lucas is handing over the reins (and the light sabers and blasters and all the rest) to new custodians and the next generation of filmmakers.

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Oct 31 2012 03:01 PM ET

'Star Wars' reaction: Abrams, Favreau, Nolfi, and Rodriguez weigh in -- EXCLUSIVE

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Image Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images; Amanda Edwards/Getty Images; Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

Some of the biggest Star Wars fans in the world are the Hollywood writers, directors, and producers who bought a ticket for a Jedi movie in the 1970s and 1980s. On Tuesday, as headlines announced a new hope for a return to Star Wars glory, those Tinseltown loyalists were hit by the Force all over again.

“All I can say is my heart literally started racing when I heard,” said Damon Lindleof, screenwriter for Prometheus. George Nolfi, writer-director of The Adjustment Bureau, said the horizon will need to be bigger to handle the colossal project taking shape there. “I can’t imagine,” Nolfi said Tuesday night, “a larger event-film for our generation than a sequel to Return of the Jedi.”

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Oct 30 2012 04:16 PM ET

Disney buying Lucasfilm, prepping new 'Star Wars' movies for 2015 and beyond -- VIDEO

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Image Credit: Todd Anderson/Disney via Getty Images

The force is strong with Mickey Mouse.

In one of the most momentous entertainment industry acquisitions of the last 30 years, the Walt Disney Company announced on Tuesday that it is purchasing Lucasfilm in a stock and cash deal valued at $4.05 billion. The sale includes plans for Star Wars: Episode VII, which is in early development, aiming for release in 2015. Walt Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger announced in a shareholder conference call that the studio also intending to release Episode VIII and Episode IX. “Our longterm plan is to release a new Star Wars feature film every two to three years,” he added, noting that the deal came with “an extensive and detailed treatment for the next three movies.” READ FULL STORY »

Aug 27 2012 12:13 PM ET

Final 'Star Wars' prequels get back-to-back 3D releases

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Blame Jar Jar Binks. In the wake of last winter’s successful 3-D release of The Phantom Menace, Lucasfilm has announced that the movie’s fellow prequels, Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, will be translated into the third dimension as well.

According to the official Star Wars Facebook page, these films will hit theaters again next fall. Clones will begin playing Sept. 20, 2013, while Sith will follow on Oct. 11.

George Lucas’s movies won’t be 2013′s only major re-releases. Universal announced two weeks ago that Jurassic Park 3D will debut on April 5, while Disney revealed in 2011 that enhanced versions of both Monsters, Inc. and The Little Mermaid will appear in theaters on Jan. 18 and Sept. 13, respectively.

Read more:
‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ season 5 trailer: Maul, Mandalorians, and one angry, lightsaber-wielding Darth Sidious — EXCLUSIVE
Seth Green’s ‘Star Wars: Detours’ trailer debuts — WATCH
10 Mash-Up ‘Star Wars’ Helmets

Aug 14 2012 10:04 PM ET

'Raiders of the Lost Ark' set for IMAX re-release

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Fans of a young, sweaty, dirt-covered Harrison Ford as the swashbuckling archaeologist Indiana Jones, hold onto your fedoras.

Steven Spielberg’s 1981 classic adventure romp Raiders of the Lost Ark will be given the big BIG screen treatment with a one-week rerelease in IMAX in September.

Lucasfilm, the studio helmed by the movie’s executive producer, George Lucas, announced that the Raiders IMAX theater showings will begin Sept. 7 as a lead-up to the Blu-ray release of the Indiana Jones series, on sale Sept. 18.

Sure, newer powerhouse films such as Avatar looked crisply modern, deeply blue and lush on IMAX, but Raiders of the Lost Ark is ripe for another generation of new and returning fans of Indiana Jones’s mishaps and misadventures splashed large across a screen. Spielberg told the New York Times no special effects were changed in the IMAX conversion. Only the audio has been bumped up for surround sound.

“When the boulder is rolling, chasing Indy through the cave, you really feel the boulder in your stomach, the way you do when a marching band passes by, and you’re standing right next to it,” Spielberg told the Times.

Another Spielberg favorite, the sharp-toothed 1975 shark saga Jaws, just arrived on Blu-ray this week.

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Read more:
Grab your whip and fedora, ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ hits 30

Jun 1 2012 04:03 PM ET

Kathleen Kennedy to co-chair Lucasfilm as George Lucas 'moves forward with retirement'

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Image Credit: Tim Whitby/Getty Images

Turns out George Lucas wasn’t bluffing with all that talk about retiring. Lucasfilm Ltd. announced today that Steven Spielberg’s longtime producing partner Kathleen Kennedy is joining the production company as co-chair. Lucas will retain his position as CEO but Kennedy’s new role will allow him to “move forward with his retirement plans,” according to a press release.

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May 22 2012 10:00 AM ET

'Red Tails' on DVD: George Lucas on making a 'real dogfight movie' -- EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

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Never count George Lucas out. That was the takeaway this past January from the surprise, if modest, box office success of Red Tails, the gee-whiz actioner about the Tuskegee Airmen that the Star Wars director had tried to bring to the big screen for 23 years. Despite mixed reviews, it won over audiences with its old-fashioned patriotism, earnest cast of mostly non A-listers, and visceral flying sequences, earning a solid ‘A’ CinemaScore. Oh, and $50 million in box office grosses, more than holding its own against brawnier January fare like The Grey and Underworld Awakening.

It’s hard to believe, then, that Red Tails almost never happened. In January, Lucas told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that no major Hollywood studio was willing to finance a World War II epic featuring an all-black cast, meaning that he had to pull out his own pocketbook if his take on the pioneering African-American fighter squad was ever going to get made. It also meant he had to wait until digital technology would advance enough for him to produce an Old Hollywood spectacle without breaking the bank. “We needed to wait till now to find the digital tech that would make it financially feasible,” producer Rick McCallum told EW at Red Tails‘ New York premiere. “Otherwise, it would have been impossible to make. We may have had 2,200 shots in Revenge of the Sith, but no less than 1,600 in Red Tails. In the end, it took two weeks longer to make this movie than it took to fight World War II.”

Take a look at this exclusive video on the making of Lucas’ passion project, which shows how many of the film’s environments, including the cramped cockpits of the Airmen’s P-51 Mustangs, had to be built out of ones and zeros. Or as Lucas puts it, “With digital technology, now we can actually do a real dogfight movie the way it should be done.” READ FULL STORY »

Apr 11 2012 08:40 AM ET

Facing local opposition, Lucasfilm cancels studio plan

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George Lucas’ empire is striking back in its long-running battle to build a palatial film studio in the pastoral hills north of San Francisco. Lucasfilm, the force behind the Star Wars movies, shocked Marin County on Tuesday by announcing that it is abandoning the controversial Grady Ranch project, citing bitter opposition from neighbors and delays in the approval process. The company said it would build its new digital media production studio elsewhere and hopes to sell the historic farmland to a developer interested in constructing low-income housing. “We love working and living in Marin, but the residents of Lucas Valley have fought this project for 25 years, and enough is enough,” the company said in a statement. “We have several opportunities to build the production stages in communities that see us as a creative asset, not as an evil empire.” READ FULL STORY »

Feb 11 2012 07:00 AM ET

'Star Wars': Deleted scene from 'Revenge of the Sith' reveals the fate of Jar Jar Binks -- EXCLUSIVE

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Image Credit: Lucasfilm Ltd

Jar Jar Binks is back on the big screen with the return of The Phantom Menace in 3-D. While the cast believed that Binks would become the breakout character when the movie was originally released in 1999, critics and Star Wars enthusiasts had a much different reaction. Suffice it to say, many were not big fans of the goofy Gungan.

Whether it was due to that audience discontent or the character simply not serving the story, Jar Jar’s role became progressively smaller in the next two films, with Binks only uttering two words (“Excuse me”) in Revenge of the Sith. Was the man who played Jar Jar, Ahmed Best, upset about his diminished role? “As an actor, yes,” says Best. “But as someone who understands film and as a filmmaker? No. George [Lucas] has to make his movie. And I’m happy to be whatever in any of it. And at the end of the day, it’s the story that matters, and if the character doesn’t fit into the story, there is nothing I can do. What ends up on the screen is what he says ends up on the screen. All I want to do is be able to facilitate his vision as best I can. That’s all I can do. I wanted to be in those movies more because I wanted to give him more. I felt like I could do a good job. And I did. I did the best job I could do.” READ FULL STORY »

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