George Lucas Turns to the Dark Side
“Creating magic is not for amateurs. I remain a significant shareholder because I have full faith and confidence in the power of Disney and Bob’s track record of driving long-term value. I have voted all of my shares for Disney’s 12 directors and urge other shareholders to do the same.” – George Lucas
A lot of people are shrieking but I’m not one of them. I did make a joke about Lucas backing Peltz a while back, but I wasn’t serious about it. Anyone who saw him at the premiere for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny could see that he was in worse shape than Joe Biden and I’m not kidding. He was barely aware of his surroundings and couldn’t move his left arm. He did not give a speech. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s had a stroke.
In 1962, George Lucas had a severe car wreck and was a long time recovering from it but it sounded like one of those things you never really recover from.
Someone with a four billion dollar fortune is elderly and is in poor a state of health as Lucas will have put his fortune into a trust and given his fading faculties, it would be a blind trust. Meaning he had no control over how his proxy would be used. Given his connections I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find out that his fortune was being managed by Blackrock, Vanguard or even ValueAct.
“Creating magic is not for amateurs.” George Lucas would never use the term ‘magic’ in this context. This statement was clearly and obviously written by Disney. It sounds exactly like the kind of thing that would be written by the flacks that put together the VoteDisney site.
It makes me sad more than angry. He couldn’t change his proxy without breaking the trust and given his infirmity his managers would have no trouble challenging him on the grounds of cognitive degeneration. His vote was going to Disney whether he wanted it to or not.
He’s an old man who’s fading fast and was undoubtedly being badgered daily by Iger and crew until he finally scrawled something that could be accused of being a signature at the bottom of the prepared staement while mumbling something to the effect of “Fine, I don’t care anymore.”
Such a pity he broke up with Marsha, the Disney deal would never have happened in the first place if she had had a say in it.
In other Star Wars news, I was briefly terrified last night when I thought I was going to have to spend time watching the Acolyte. I thought it had snuck up on me. You can’t imagine my relief when I found out it was just a trailer.
I had been wondering what this show was going to be. Leslie Headland is not a creative which in Hollywood means she is going to be the kind of producer that kit-smashes plots together in a two-sentence pitch.
You’ve seen the action and you’ve recognized Carrie Anne Moss. Which means you’ve probably guessed the pitch. “It’s Star Wars enters the Matrix!”
This is the first Star Wars the High Republic series. Headland’s pitch predates the High Republic which means that it was just shoveled into that period because she didn’t really care about when it took place. This idea has probably has been knocking around in her head since she first developed a crush on Carrie Ann Moss in 1999.
Frankly, it looks terrible. LucasFilm is fundamentally incapable of delivering anything good and I don’t see how this high concept, High Republic was ever going to work even if there were talented writers who loved Star Wars working on it.
I suspect that this is going to be a desperate attempt to reboot Star Wars without any of George Lucas’s “baggage” attached. There may be people who like it but none of them were ever Star Wars fans.
