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Lucasfilm "Licking Their Wounds" But Not Halting 'Star Wars' Development
Mild spoilers in TFA about certain characters that appear in the film.
Disney and Lucasfilm are reassessing their plans for future Star Wars movies in the wake of the disappointing performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story, which is having to fight to make much more than $350 million worldwide, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. "They haven't slowed down development," says a source with knowledge of Lucasfilm's thinking, "but they are licking their wounds."
Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and her team are regrouping and figuring out the direction of the movies beyond the final installment of the main series of films, Star Wars: Episode IX, which is scheduled for release Dec. 20, 2019. "It doesn't mean those spinoffs don't happen," says another insider of Solo's underperformance globally. "It just means they're trying to figure out how to make, and market, them differently."
[...] "They were developing anything and everything," says another exec. "It was a case of them stuffing so much sausage and not try to break the casing."
Meanwhile, Han Solo's blaster was sold for over 0.1% of the film's gross.
Also at Collider, Space.com, and Forbes (archive).
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @10:05AM (4 children)
And they were given a chance to act and people had some taste of which shots to keep.
For example Han Solo's "I know..." to Leia's "I love you".
The good actors become specialists in their character and whether subconsciously or consciously would often go "this is what my character would say" and say it, instead of what was written... Maybe even argue with the writer or director over it.
In contrast when I first saw The Phantom Menace it seemed like many of the actors were just reading Lucas's lines for the first or second time and Lucas says "OK, CUT! That's good enough, let's go make more dresses for Amidala!". And everyone goes like "huh?".
Those actors were OK in other movies so it's not their acting ability/inability...
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday June 25 2018, @10:36AM (3 children)
Most of the stuff with Ewan and Liam was done in front of empty soundstages on blue/green screen. There was literally nothing for them to see, react to, or do, other thansay the lines (which George could then use cgi to change, anyway)
They knew the plot sucked, the plot holes were so big even Amidala's headware wouldn't plug it..
Say the lines, get paid.
Then, if you think about someone saying "midichlorian" with a straight face, maybe they *were* doing a good job of acting!
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @11:27AM
Lots of actors act in front of green screens. So it seems doubtful that that was such a relevant issue.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday June 25 2018, @11:27PM (1 child)
Andy Serkis did much of his Gollum work on empty soundstages covered in little dots and absolutely killed it. Ewan and Liam don't get a pass for that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 28 2018, @06:54AM
I'm not convinced it's Ewan and Liam's fault. As I mentioned earlier, we might be just seeing their first or second take then Lucas goes "OK, CUT! That's good enough, let's go make more dresses for Amidala!"... Instead of "Come on you can do better than that!", let them try a few different things and go for the best ones.