Well, I didn’t see this one coming! George Lucas has sold Lucasfilm to Disney for $4bn. For that they get Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Willow, ILM, Howard the Duck, the lot. Wow. Disney have announced that they’ll be releasing Star Wars Episode 7 3D (which will be the start of a new trilogy) in 2015. Wow again. I’m not sure how to feel about this at the moment.
New Star Wars? Yep, count me in. Disney Star Wars though? I’m not too sure. Why the concern? Simple: John Carter. (I think I was one of the twelve people who saw it at the cinema.) That was not a good film.
George Lucas is planning on staying as a creative consultant, which I’m really pleased about. Why? A lot of venom is spat at the Star Wars prequels and I wish I could’ve had a crack at rewriting the scripts a little, however considering these were kids films, the subtext of corrupt governments, political backstabbing, etc was great to see. Will Disney add that spice to the mix? I hope so.
What will happen? Who knows? There needs to be a war going on for the name to work, so what went wrong after Return of the Jedi? Maybe Ahsoka Tano, Anakin’s padwan from The Clone Wars cartoon series turns to the dark side, get frozen in carbonite, then is accidentally released. Maybe Luke Skywalker, destroyer of the Empire and hero of the republic is murdered at the beginning, and this assassination causes an uprising? (I hope Luke doesn’t die, by the way. The way the other films have gone though – Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, it doesn’t look good for the farm boy.)
I’ll be there opening day, obviously and hoping the new film will be fantastic. Best of luck to everyone involved – I hope you make a great film.
What else might Disney have in store? More games I hope. (I have a feeling Star Wars 1313 will be a PS4K / Xbox3 launch tile.) If they’re in the mood to make some easy money, feel free to rerelease / update the arcade Pod Racers game for the PS3 / Move controllers (and make it 3D while you’re at it, please!).