George Lucas Takes His Jar-Jar and Goes Home

According to a story in Variety, George Lucas, Executive Producer of Howard the Duck and Willow, and creator of Jar-Jar Binks and the Midichlorians, is calling it quits, and trading the film business for television."We don't want to make movies. We're about to get into television. As far as Lucasfilm is concerned, we've moved away from the feature film thing because it's too expensive and it's too risky."Lucas said that the secret to success is "quantity." Surprising nobody who has seen Star Wars Episodes I-III, Lucas made no mention of "quality."

All betrayed-geek snark aside, I actually agree with Lucas' reasoning on expensive, huge studio films versus smaller, less-expensive films.Spending $100 million on production costs and another $100 million on P&A makes no sense, he said.

"For that same $200 million, I can make 50-60 two-hour movies. That's 120 hours as opposed to two hours. In the future market, that's where it's going to land, because it's going to be all pay-per-view and downloadable.Firefly fans may understand the reasoning. How many episodes of the series could have been made and distributed via DVD or online (if no network was interested) for the cost of Serenity?

Lucas is not leaving the huge movies behind just yet, though. Indiana Jones IV is in pre-produciton, and he has a project or two that he's had in development for over a decade that he wants to put out.He calls himself "semi-retired" but reiterated his plans to direct "small movies, esoteric in nature," after his other projects are launched. He expects to serve as exec producer on the two features and the TV shows, including a live-action "Star Wars" skein.He also has some changes in mind for special editions of his existing movies: The Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark will be replaced with Care Bears, and Willow will be turned into one 90 minute shot of a walkie talkie. The updated version of Willow is expected to be more enjoyable than its box office counterpart.

(via Slashdot, where one astute commenter observes that Lucas got out of movies three films too late.)

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