Disney + Star Wars = Best Day Ever

Apparently it takes a 4 billion dollar deal to get me blogging. That’s okay, though, because if the news of Disney buying Lucasfilms can’t do it, I may as well close up shop.

So yeah…

Disney inked a deal to buy Lucasfilms for 4.5 BILLION dollars. That purchase includes Industrial Light and Magic and Skywalker Sound. Lucasfilms, in case you don’t know, is the studio that has the creative rights to Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

As you can imagine, as a Disney fan, I believe this is the awesomest thing in the history of awesome things. Both film franchises feature original trilogies that are easily among the 5 best trilogies in film history. Not only are they awesome, but they’re also insanely profitable. In fact, maybe 4.5 billion dollars isn’t enough money to pay George Lucas.

So yeah, Disney can’t lose.

But what do I say to all of the obsessive Star Wars fans who are afraid that Disney will ruin the legacy of The Force?

Well…

First, let me defend my beloved Disney against all of this “Disneyfied” nonsense. I’ve seen around the internet this idea that suddenly Disney is going to somehow over-commercialize or over-cutesy the Star Wars creative property.

Um… Have these people seen the Star Wars legos, and video games, and toys and toys and toys? George Lucas was the all time greatest ever at wringing out every tidbit of cash out of literally ever corner of his kingdom. My long-time buddy, The Scary Pinecone used to collect the Star Wars figures, and there were tons of figures of characters I had no recollection of from movies I’ve seen dozens of times.

George Lucas created Ewoks. George Lucas created Jar Jar Binks (for Pete’s sake!) He forced poor little innocent Jake Lloyd to shriek “Yippee!”. Do they really want to get into this “Disney=Cutified” thing?

Anyway, here are my points in favor of the deal:

1) As many others have pointed out… There’s absolutely no risk from either side of the deal. Disney will make boatloads of cash no matter what, and they’ll also have the extremely valuable studios of ILM and Skywalker Sound. Lucasfilms risks nothing in terms of quality, because let’s face it… The last good movie to come out of Lucasfilms was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989. The last good Star Wars movie was in 1983. I was 3 years old. I will be 33 in February. The recent Star Wars movies have been worse than mediocre, and my preference is to just forget that Indy 4 never happened at all. Disney can’t make it worse. There’s only one direction to go, and that’s up.

2) George Lucas conceptualized Star Wars as a 9 Part Story, and only 6 parts have been created. He’s openly said that he’d never make Episodes 7 to 9, and that’s a shame, because if they use the Timothy Zahn “Heir to the Empire” trilogy as a basis, the fans are truly missing out. Those stories are awesome, and they introduce some spectacular characters, aliens, and worlds. It could be awesome, and Lucas doesn’t have the creative juice to do it. Even if he did, let’s just be honest and admit that the biggest problems with the recent films is that he had too much control. Disney is arguably the only studio to have the bandwidth, talent, and funds to do it right. I’m excited. I say give the reins to J.J. Abrahms or Rian Johnson or Joss Whedon and sit back and enjoy the ride.

3) Disney, with their enormous scope, can offer the Star Wars fans an opportunity to love their stories for years to come in dozens of different medias. I’ve already heard talk of Star Wars themed attractions at the parks. New movies. New cartoons. It’s a way to keep the stories alive and bring them to even more audiences. I mean… who wouldn’t love to go to Disney World at ride the hot new roller coaster “The Millenium Falcon and the Kessel Run”? (That’s my idea, Disney… HIRE ME!)

4) Nobody’s really talking much about the Indy movies, and maybe that’s because Harrison Ford is old, Shia LeBouf is… unsuitable to take over the franchise, and you can’t really do “Indy” without “Indy”. That’s fair, but a buddy of mine asked me about Disney’s track record with Sci-Fi, and I have to admit, it’s not that great. Action/Adventure, however… I’d venture to say that the best Action/Adventure movie of the past 10 years is the first Pirates flick. The Avengers is pretty good too… I’d be interested to see what Disney does with a property like Indiana Jones… Can they go in a different direction without Harrison Ford in the spotlight?

5) Speaking of “The Avengers”, I think that perhaps this is the best example of why a Disneyfied Lucasfilm is going to be awesome…

Disney bought Marvel a couple of years ago, and every comic book fan boy freaked the hell out. “Oh no! The Hulk will have Mickey Ears! They’ll be “baby” versions of Iron Man and Captain America.”

That hasn’t happened. Disney’s done a great job of keeping true to the Marvel stories and characters. I realize that there’s only been a small samples size to this point, but The Avengers was stupendous. They did it right. They hired respected “Geek Insiders” like Joss Whedon to write and direct. They made sure the effects were tight. They treated their stars right, so we know they’ll be back. It was masterfully done, and nobody can complain. Maybe someone doesn’t love the plot, but all-in-all, it was an enormous success. Also they made 1.5 Billion dollars.

Look… There are no guarantees, but Disney is the one company out there that combines the technical prowess, the creative talent, and the ridiculously deep pockets to do it right.

Let me put it this way…

If we knew that Lucas wasn’t going to be available to make another Star Wars movie, but we knew there would still BE a Star Wars movie… what studio do you want taking over?

Disney is it.

Back to Basics

A new era at Disney may have started last Monday, and few people are aware of it. I didn’t even really read much about it until the day before, and knowing how much time I have to read about just about everything, it’s safe to say this was a stealthy shift in power.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Rich Ross was named Chairman of Walt Disney Studios in 2009 and even though he was at the helm for huge hits like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Alice in Wonderland, and Toy Story 3 (3 of the 11 highest grossing movies of all time), he was also largely responsible for the crazy spending (and disappointing returns) on movies like John Carter and Mars Needs Moms, both of which lost over 100 million dollars, and let’s be honest… were hugely damaging to the company’s reputation as a developer of top tier movies.

Primarily due to the failings of these two movies, and his silly attempt to pawn the issues of John Carter off on Pixar, Ross resigned in April.

This is a good thing.

I’m not saying that he did all bad. He was with the company in one way or another for a long time, and he helmed some important projects. It was just time for him to go. John Carter, especially, didn’t have to be the failure that it was, but the over-spending and poor marketing plan were crushing.

Until this past weekend, I’d not heard much in the way of rumors about who would replace Ross.

To be sure, this is a HUGE job. Let’s talk about what all it entails these days…

The Chairman is charged with overseeing:
Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Animation Studios
Pixar Animation Studios
DIsneyToon Studios
Disneynature
Touchstone Pictures
Hollywood Pictures
Disney Music Group
Disney Theatrical Group
Disney Distribution
Disney Studio Services (This is a lot of stuff0

This also includes the new Marvel movies.

I mean… this is a ridiculously big job, handling dozens of subsidiaries, and thousands of employees. Rich Ross wasn’t that great at it, it appears.

When I read that Alan Horn was tapped to replace Ross, I got excited. I don’t know a lot about the inner workings of the Hollywood studio system, but I knew of Horn, at least a little.

Alan Horn was one of the founders of Castle Rock Entertainment. He also was most recently President of Warner Brothers. During his tenure there, he oversaw the release of the new Batman films as well as ALL of the Harry Potter franchise movies. It’s hard to argue with that sort of cohesion of process.

This was, at the outset, all I knew about Horn, and I was still pretty happy about it. Then I started to read the press info about the guy…

Some quotes:
“It’s like James Dolan hiring Phil Jackson to coach the Knicks. You feel like Disney is back in the game.” – a veteran Hollywood agent.
“A great choice, he's an executive that ran a big studio for years with a lot of success. He knows movies and he knows the business." – Jerry Bruckheimer

I like these quotes.

I also like that from everything I’ve read, it appears that Disney is refocusing on making movies. This sounds like a weird thing to say about what is a movie studio, but the thing is… in recent years, with Bob Iger running the show, the Disney focus has been on other parts of the brand. The parks. The cruise line. The merchandising. The television divisions (the very successful ABC and ESPN are both Disney properties). I’m not saying that Iger has done a bad job, because I think for the most part he has been successful. It’s just that he’s sort of marginalized the movie part of things, and thus alienated a lot of the front-line movie talent.

Now.. this is all speculation, but let’s take the epic failure that was John Carter. This was a 250 million dollar movie that featured a near-complete unknown in just about every scene. I’m not saying that Taylor Kitsch was bad, because he wasn’t the problem with that movie (or with other, non-Disney, failure Battleship), but tell me… if you’d seen the exact same campaign advertising the film, but instead of a no-name TV actor playing the lead role, you had a proven movie action movie leading man like, I dunno… Chris Pine, or Chris Evans, or Chris Hemsworth, or Christian Bale (literally any Chris, really). Wouldn’t you have thought twice before passing up on seeing it? Who knows.

Anyway, there’s a lot of speculation that Disney’s recent de-emphasis in the movie business has steered top name people away, and thus we have Taylor Kitsch instead of one of the many successful Chris actors I mentioned.

The actual Walt Disney was a man of many interests. He spent time focusing on animation, movies, television, theme parks, and you know… trains. The thing that Walt never forgot, though, was that the movie business can be the bread-winner when done right.

The thing that seems to have been forgotten is that the movies feed every other facet.

Create a new, iconic, animated film and suddenly you have new merchandise. New theme park tie-ins. New everything. A really popular movie is the gift that keeps on giving. Just look at the Harry Potter franchise. Those movies single-handedly saved Universal Studios by giving them That Magical World of Harry Potter, or whatever the hell those people are calling that thing we try not to acknowledge, but is clearly very popular.

Alan Horn brings that clout and respect to Disney, perhaps for the first time since the heyday height of Jeffrey Katzenberg. I can’t help but feel that this is the direction and the momentum that will bring Disney to new heights.

I don’t say this without reservations. Horn is 69 years old, and essentially chose Disney over retirement. It’s hard to imagine he’s got more than a hand full of years that he’ll WANT to give. I would never say a man can’t do something because he’s old, but I can certainly speculate as to the degree to which he’ll want to do it for a long time.

Five years is not a long time in the movie business. Look how long certain movies develop. It’s very possible that Horn won’t be in the working mood long enough to really build much of a pipeline, and with Iger leaving in 2015, it’s possible that five years is optimistic. Whoever replaces Iger will want his own people in places of power.

Alan Horn is beloved and well respected. He’s got a fighter’s chance to really make some hay. Maybe the best thing to realistically hope for is that Horn gets the ball rolling, and Iger sets up his and Horn’s successors to keep on running with it.

I’m not sure what it all means, but it’s worth watching, and I have very high hopes that Disney has made a choice that will ring in another golden age. My fingers are crossed.