Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Pre-release)
- Thread starter Warpaint
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astroboy
Master Member
This is a major point. The only reason that part of the last transformers flick took place in Hong Kong was to get the Chinese market.The May release of the Star Wars prequels put a serious dent on their toy sales - Lucas and his family practically starved because toy sales weren't what they had hoped for.
Episode 8 and 9 are both slated for a May release. Is Disney looking to move Christmas to early June in 2017?
JW strong opening shows Disney that the May 2015 was a winning date - whereas, December - still a very likely success - could have issues (weather, economy, etc).
You can have your issues with me - but facts are facts.
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The international market is also a much bigger player now than it has been - I don't know if that's reached it's peak or if that may continue to grow. Seeing that China just got the old SW movies, I'm guessing there is yet another market for SW to capitalize on.
Mind you, I don't see what the time of release has anything to do with that
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cboath
Master Member
if they really wanted may that badly, they could have gone with May 2016 as well. Nothing was written in stone that it HAD to be 2015.
FWIW, Avengers PT1 is May 2018, PT2 May 2019.
When leaks were happening early in the year, JJ said he could have it out in May if need be. Now, that would probably would have been rushing things. I think you're also giving JJ credit for more power than he has. The odds they said we want you for E7 and you're completely free to do anything you want to the script including largely toss it. I imagine he had a bit of leeway, but not wholesale change power.
The story I read was Lucas had a treatment that featured the new over the old and Disney wanted it the other way around. The ONLY place i've heard it attributed to JJ is this thread.
As for timing, I don't think one month is better than another honestly. There are more released in summer simply because there's loads more room. Schools are out June-August, that's three months of 'nothing else to do'. Xmas is 2-3 weeks. So, yeah, one will have loads more movies released than the other due to sheer availability. The point of the top 2 all time grossing movies being in december isn't meant to say that december is the better choice, just that it's a very valid one. And frankly, if merchandising has anything to do with it, december would be preferable. Every single gaming consol in the last 20 year has bee released here in, generally, october. Why? Enough to get some out there and be the 'gotta have it' present for xmas. That's the exclusive reason for it. The licensing tie in will be different now i imagine, but for LFL, it was an up front cash cow that made the movie turn a profit before a single scene was shot. The prequels had 1B in licensing before anything was out. It made it so all three turned in about 500M profit before tickets were sold. Same thing here. I'd imagine the license kicking off at xmas actually raised it's price a bit (probably not tons) as the licensee's will get a bigger bit of their money back up front.
But frankly, it comes back to, one person thinking every decision is and will be wrong and pretty much everyone else taking a wait and see approach.
You can't toss out rumor to support a theory. I heard a rumor that GL is secretly writing all three and handpicked JJ.
Doesn't make it remotely true. Even if he did turn it down, no one has a freaking clue as to why. Could be he thought he couldn't get out of trek 3 which would overlap, or he was (at the time) committed elsewhere to something that fell through, or his intial thought was he wanted to stay a fan, etc, etc, etc. You're just inferring it's for reasons that aren't good or will reflect badly on the project.
If they tossed a script, it doesn't necessarily push things back. Sure, you need the re-write, but if you just re-assign actions from one character to another, pre-production stays the same, sets, efx, etc.
Just because something happening 'could' be bad, does not mean it 'is' bad, or that it cannot be 'good'.
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which no longer happens anyway because tickets are sold 4-8 weeks in advance only on the internet
FWIW, Avengers PT1 is May 2018, PT2 May 2019.
When leaks were happening early in the year, JJ said he could have it out in May if need be. Now, that would probably would have been rushing things. I think you're also giving JJ credit for more power than he has. The odds they said we want you for E7 and you're completely free to do anything you want to the script including largely toss it. I imagine he had a bit of leeway, but not wholesale change power.
The story I read was Lucas had a treatment that featured the new over the old and Disney wanted it the other way around. The ONLY place i've heard it attributed to JJ is this thread.
As for timing, I don't think one month is better than another honestly. There are more released in summer simply because there's loads more room. Schools are out June-August, that's three months of 'nothing else to do'. Xmas is 2-3 weeks. So, yeah, one will have loads more movies released than the other due to sheer availability. The point of the top 2 all time grossing movies being in december isn't meant to say that december is the better choice, just that it's a very valid one. And frankly, if merchandising has anything to do with it, december would be preferable. Every single gaming consol in the last 20 year has bee released here in, generally, october. Why? Enough to get some out there and be the 'gotta have it' present for xmas. That's the exclusive reason for it. The licensing tie in will be different now i imagine, but for LFL, it was an up front cash cow that made the movie turn a profit before a single scene was shot. The prequels had 1B in licensing before anything was out. It made it so all three turned in about 500M profit before tickets were sold. Same thing here. I'd imagine the license kicking off at xmas actually raised it's price a bit (probably not tons) as the licensee's will get a bigger bit of their money back up front.
But frankly, it comes back to, one person thinking every decision is and will be wrong and pretty much everyone else taking a wait and see approach.
You can't toss out rumor to support a theory. I heard a rumor that GL is secretly writing all three and handpicked JJ.
Doesn't make it remotely true. Even if he did turn it down, no one has a freaking clue as to why. Could be he thought he couldn't get out of trek 3 which would overlap, or he was (at the time) committed elsewhere to something that fell through, or his intial thought was he wanted to stay a fan, etc, etc, etc. You're just inferring it's for reasons that aren't good or will reflect badly on the project.
If they tossed a script, it doesn't necessarily push things back. Sure, you need the re-write, but if you just re-assign actions from one character to another, pre-production stays the same, sets, efx, etc.
Just because something happening 'could' be bad, does not mean it 'is' bad, or that it cannot be 'good'.
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which no longer happens anyway because tickets are sold 4-8 weeks in advance only on the internet
JD
Master Member
The rumors say JJ and (especially) Kennedy wanted to push TFA to May 2016 - Bob Iger was "adamant" about Star Wars being released in 2015. (There are plenty of reliable sites out there that reported this). May 2016 doesn't make much sense as Disney has Cap 3 and Alice Through the Looking Glass slated for release during that month.
I don't know what happened behind the scenes - what's been reported is that JJ initially passed on this movie. We also know Brad Bird - and possibly Matthew Vaughn passed on it, too - who knows if there were others. Did the other directors passing on the gig, give JJ more leverage and more power and control over this movie? The Hollywood Reporter went so far as to site reports that JJ became "autocratic" during pre-production.
Latino Review and others say Iger was upset about JJ's ditching of Arndt and the delay to December (and wanting to push it back to May) that it cost JJ the job of directing VIII and/or IX (VIIII?)... I don't know if that's true. But, we do know Rian Johnson is directing the next installment.
It's all about timing with these releases. I think it's more than apparent that summer is the blockbuster season; but, if that summer is packed with movie after movie - there's not a lot of room for longevity... it seems like the December works because there aren't a whole lot of movies planned for December and January. Although, historically January movie gross is about 1/3 of December.
I agree there are plenty of rumors and speculation and becomes which sources you've come to trust.
I don't know what happened behind the scenes - what's been reported is that JJ initially passed on this movie. We also know Brad Bird - and possibly Matthew Vaughn passed on it, too - who knows if there were others. Did the other directors passing on the gig, give JJ more leverage and more power and control over this movie? The Hollywood Reporter went so far as to site reports that JJ became "autocratic" during pre-production.
Latino Review and others say Iger was upset about JJ's ditching of Arndt and the delay to December (and wanting to push it back to May) that it cost JJ the job of directing VIII and/or IX (VIIII?)... I don't know if that's true. But, we do know Rian Johnson is directing the next installment.
It's all about timing with these releases. I think it's more than apparent that summer is the blockbuster season; but, if that summer is packed with movie after movie - there's not a lot of room for longevity... it seems like the December works because there aren't a whole lot of movies planned for December and January. Although, historically January movie gross is about 1/3 of December.
I agree there are plenty of rumors and speculation and becomes which sources you've come to trust.
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JD
Master Member
I don't trust any of them. But, sometimes there is truth to them... this is the type of info that we'll most likely know the truth about.Never trust LR
(FWIW: LR has their share of hits and misses; or as Vivek said in this very thread: "It's Latino Review, they have a solid track record in the last decade when it comes to movie scoops. Also check out the video where El Mayimbe mentions some of their other scoops.").
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Y'all should really read the Vanity Fair article about TFA. They go into a lot of this. George made inclusion/development of his 7/8/9 treatments conditional for the Lucasfilm sale to Disney. Disney wanted the May 2015 release right out of the gate, but KK was the one who said they needed more time, as they had no story, no script, no actors, no director... She tasked the Story Group -- of which Arndt is part -- to start bashing out a plan. Lucasfilm felt -- before JJ was even involved -- that focusing on teenage main characters smacked too much of TPM, and they remembered how bad an idea that had turned out, so they decided to abandon George's treatments and go in other directions. Kathleen's known JJ for decades, and he was her first choice, late in 2012. JJ initially was going to decline (note the tense) because he was feeling burned out after doing Star Trek, Super 8, and Star Trek Into Darkness back to back to back, and had planned a six-month-long vacation with his family that he'd been promising them for some time. He also had just come from Trek and felt it was too much "Star" stuff for one person. And, as a fan for most of his life, he wanted to go watch it in the theater rather than make it. When KK met with him, he fully expected to respectfully pass...
...but then she told him about the Story Group and the Big Canon Reset and the blank canvas Lucasfilm was looking at and his excitement got the better of him. In his words: "The logic of it being the wrong thing was overruled for me by the emotion of it." Or, as Kathleen put it, "He turned back into an 11-year-old boy."
If it had been a May release, other studios would have scheduled their films to not have to compete. Look at the release schedule around and just after December 18th. I don't know anything about Vaughn's maybe-involvement. I know Disney wanted right off to have the alternating schedule that's pretty well locked in now, of an episodic film alternating with an anthology film every year. JJ can't do VIII, as it's already in early pre-production, but he is on as a producer and consultant (to make sure everyone's kept up to speed on the development of the story and he has a chance to weigh in), and will be directing IX.
And I was 6 years old when ESB came out and I first saw it. I've always seen it as just a bit of trash that falls from Cloud City, never Luke's hand and lightsaber. As others have pointed out, there are apparently hundreds of those ports all over the shaft walls. We don't know which one (if any) sucked in the lightsaber. We don't know what triggered the hatch below Luke to open and whether the same would have happened for the saber, or even if it conveniently stopped on a hatch. Et cetera. I'm going to wait and see what explanation comes out before condemning it.
I don't find the lightsaber, or Stormtroopers, or the Empire, or the OT heroes in any way weak or contrived. It is strong storytelling to have established characters and settings and touchstones help introduce audiences to the new and then step back. I am one of those who strongly feels everything we've seen in the trailers thus far all takes place less than an hour into the film. All setup with nothing but rumors of potential execution.
Oh, and Stormtroopers haven't been all clones since somewhere between ROTS and ANH. I've done rough math elsewhere pointing out that with all the planets the Empire has access to, and averaging out populations to, say, three billion, if only one percent of the population enlists, and only one percent of those make it into and through Stormtrooper boot camp, that's still on the order of hundreds of millions of Stormtrooper recruits from throughout the Empire. Even chopping that to a tenth of that to ensure the most loyal and such, that's still tens of millions. Not saying there aren't clone Stormtroopers, but I doubt they're even the majority, let alone the entirety. So I have no problem with the First Order recruiting a few thousand to kick things off.
--Jonah
...but then she told him about the Story Group and the Big Canon Reset and the blank canvas Lucasfilm was looking at and his excitement got the better of him. In his words: "The logic of it being the wrong thing was overruled for me by the emotion of it." Or, as Kathleen put it, "He turned back into an 11-year-old boy."
If it had been a May release, other studios would have scheduled their films to not have to compete. Look at the release schedule around and just after December 18th. I don't know anything about Vaughn's maybe-involvement. I know Disney wanted right off to have the alternating schedule that's pretty well locked in now, of an episodic film alternating with an anthology film every year. JJ can't do VIII, as it's already in early pre-production, but he is on as a producer and consultant (to make sure everyone's kept up to speed on the development of the story and he has a chance to weigh in), and will be directing IX.
And I was 6 years old when ESB came out and I first saw it. I've always seen it as just a bit of trash that falls from Cloud City, never Luke's hand and lightsaber. As others have pointed out, there are apparently hundreds of those ports all over the shaft walls. We don't know which one (if any) sucked in the lightsaber. We don't know what triggered the hatch below Luke to open and whether the same would have happened for the saber, or even if it conveniently stopped on a hatch. Et cetera. I'm going to wait and see what explanation comes out before condemning it.
I don't find the lightsaber, or Stormtroopers, or the Empire, or the OT heroes in any way weak or contrived. It is strong storytelling to have established characters and settings and touchstones help introduce audiences to the new and then step back. I am one of those who strongly feels everything we've seen in the trailers thus far all takes place less than an hour into the film. All setup with nothing but rumors of potential execution.
Oh, and Stormtroopers haven't been all clones since somewhere between ROTS and ANH. I've done rough math elsewhere pointing out that with all the planets the Empire has access to, and averaging out populations to, say, three billion, if only one percent of the population enlists, and only one percent of those make it into and through Stormtrooper boot camp, that's still on the order of hundreds of millions of Stormtrooper recruits from throughout the Empire. Even chopping that to a tenth of that to ensure the most loyal and such, that's still tens of millions. Not saying there aren't clone Stormtroopers, but I doubt they're even the majority, let alone the entirety. So I have no problem with the First Order recruiting a few thousand to kick things off.
--Jonah
I think people are getting a little confused about the May dates. Principle photography on TFA wrapped November 2014. That made the end of May 2015 a possible but difficult date to achieve a release for many reasons,but one of the most critical was the huge effects workload ILM already had on its books to achieve for the summer season 2015 . Here it is for your interest:
Age of Ultron
Tomorrowland
JURASSIC WORLD
Terminator Gensys
Ant Man
Spectre
And thats not mentioning several others like World of Warcraft for latter summer 2016. And of course there is Star Wars:TFA.
Disney owns ILM. The huge finacial gains that come from effectively paying themselves to make their own movies whilst at the same time doing all the work for other studios is of course a brilliant commercial advantage for them. They just can't loose. Unless they rush it out
By completing all the work on this years spring/summer films they've effectively freed up alot of their resources for the ALL the Star Wars sequels and standalones now, which is why they are moving at great speed with them (Rogue One ) they have the time and resources and teams already in place to keep the ball rolling and thats hugely cost effective, particularly when so many of the Marvel films are also planned in there over the next few years. They are not idiots. They've a gap now and they planned to use it and, thanks to digital editing and a huge established resource of ready to use SW digital effects they are well ahead of the curve. This is why they will roll them out as effectively as the Marvel Universe films.
May 2016 would have been too late for everyone ,and Disney catagorically went for the Christmas date when the merchandising and marketing stategy advantage became obvious. September the Fourth 2015 will see one of the biggest multimedia and retail events ever co ordinated in the history of marketing and it will be massive. All the winter/Christmas retail catalogues, several of the novels and e books and other social media tie ins will make it impossible to miss.
For many there will be the sense that this will spoil a lot thats in the film, but thats just business I'm afraid. The planning that has gone into this is enormous , the publicity campign up until the Xmas release will build from here to peak on the 18th December. This year Christmas will be owned by Star Wars. Believe me .
Age of Ultron
Tomorrowland
JURASSIC WORLD
Terminator Gensys
Ant Man
Spectre
And thats not mentioning several others like World of Warcraft for latter summer 2016. And of course there is Star Wars:TFA.
Disney owns ILM. The huge finacial gains that come from effectively paying themselves to make their own movies whilst at the same time doing all the work for other studios is of course a brilliant commercial advantage for them. They just can't loose. Unless they rush it out
By completing all the work on this years spring/summer films they've effectively freed up alot of their resources for the ALL the Star Wars sequels and standalones now, which is why they are moving at great speed with them (Rogue One ) they have the time and resources and teams already in place to keep the ball rolling and thats hugely cost effective, particularly when so many of the Marvel films are also planned in there over the next few years. They are not idiots. They've a gap now and they planned to use it and, thanks to digital editing and a huge established resource of ready to use SW digital effects they are well ahead of the curve. This is why they will roll them out as effectively as the Marvel Universe films.
May 2016 would have been too late for everyone ,and Disney catagorically went for the Christmas date when the merchandising and marketing stategy advantage became obvious. September the Fourth 2015 will see one of the biggest multimedia and retail events ever co ordinated in the history of marketing and it will be massive. All the winter/Christmas retail catalogues, several of the novels and e books and other social media tie ins will make it impossible to miss.
For many there will be the sense that this will spoil a lot thats in the film, but thats just business I'm afraid. The planning that has gone into this is enormous , the publicity campign up until the Xmas release will build from here to peak on the 18th December. This year Christmas will be owned by Star Wars. Believe me .
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Part of what I was trying to convey was that Disney wanted May 2015 release even as the sale was being settled. It wasn't even the end of 2012 yet when Kathleen told Disney to cool their jets and made them push it back, since they didn't have anything yt with which to proceed. The more recent talk of May 2015 release for TFA was some months back when JJ quipped that he kinda wished he could make that date just because then all the leaks for the film would stop and he wouldn't have to play Big Brother for another six months.
--Jonah
Riceball
Master Member
I don't think that you understand how digital effects work, little to nothing used before can be tee-used, at least not by simply drying them into the film. They would still have to do all of the comp work, taking the Kingston and color, then rendering it and that all takes time and having pre-existing assets doesn't help that much except in the morning and texturing dept. That's assuming that any of the existing assets can be used, the vast majority of ILM's digital Star Wars assets are going to be from the prequels which will be of little use in a film set some 30 years after the OT. I'd also wager that anything they have that might carry over to the new films still still require a lot of work because of the changes in technology as well as internal standards over the decades since they worked on the PT. Any PT assets they might want to use will most likely need to be up-ressed and/or made more detailed in order to accommodate higher resolution projection and home viewing and that takes a lot of time to do, to the point that it's almost faster to start from scratch. Then even if a model and its textures are up to snuff they would still have to animate, light, comp, and then render all from scratch.
That's not to say that they don't have a library of our-existing assets that they can use, but it's likely to only be small stuff like random debris, explains, plants, and the like; stuff that they could plug into any film they work on and not just Star Wars. But that is stuff that almost any decent, established effects house would have and would hardly be exclusive to ILM
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Its already been mentioned that the Falcon was already available as a rendered model asset by somebody ( but not in this thread) when discussing teaser trailer two and his credibility is 100%. Pre production work on Rogue One is already well advanced because the existing teams working on TFA are rolling on into this project and using a fair portion of whats being used in TFA to retro design whats in Rogue One. Which is why its got a very early release date. The rendering programs and all the tech gear is exactly the same as ILM has been using for TFA and no doubt certain other digital effects will be contracted out as per the norm. But the bulk of it is being done by ILM.
Westies14
Master Member
Grievous? Dooku? Never heard of them! The names in the OT aren't as on-the-nose as the prequel names by a long shot.
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