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George Lucas was surprised that merchandising revenue collapsed in 1984 because he had abandoned Star Wars.
His pitiful efforts - Ewoks and Droids Saturday morning cartoons - didn't improve matters.
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@judgedread If he had re-released the same films, no updates or "remastering", just re-released to the theaters in a cycle every ten years (i.e. 77,80,83 - 87,90,93 - 97,00,03) he could have kept interest high.
If he'd been developing the Prequels, he could have released the first one in the every-three-years cycle and worked with a new pattern (77,80,83,86,89,92).
Instead, we had Blockbuster Video. I taped Star Wars one night when it was playing on the local UHF channel. That was it. No other contact with the greatest movies ever made.
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@NoDoxGregBrady Lucas knew Lucasfilm was approaching a crisis because Star Wars was about to end so he hired a corporate hatchet man, former CFO of a computer services company, to put things in order (and avoid being seen as the bad guy). The new CEO's mandate was to bring the company into profitability without Star Wars merchandising and theatrical revenue.
The situation was dire and the CEO, who perhaps alone among all Lucasfilm employees could actually talk back to Lucas, approached George and told him that the one solution for the cash flow problem was simple and obvious: Do another Star Wars film.
'I just can't do it, you're on your own.'
So he laid off 50% of the staff and began looking for divisions to sell off for quick cash.
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@judgedread @NoDoxGregBrady From what I recall Star Wars was a pretty much a dead brand in the late 80s/early 90s until Timothy Zahn‘s books brought it back.
The Dark Forces PC games probably helped too
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@DW2 I believe the EU was initiated after the reissue of the trilogy on VHS sold millions of copies and Lucas realized that, even without a new feature film, the fans could be milked for cash with new non-theatrical products. That's when he authorized the Zahn sequel trilogy, which he did give his stamp of approval.
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@judgedread imagine if Disney wasn’t completely retarded and simply asked Zahn to write the sequel trilogy. He probably would’ve come relatively cheap too
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@EvilSandmich To have Ford, Hamill and Fisher would have required a complete rewrite, which in a complex story tends to undermine the entire structure.
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@judgedread @EvilSandmich Sure, but I think Zahn would've been up to the task. At the very least he would've done a better job than the dipshit duo of JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson.
Unfortunately we'll never know, and now Star Wars has been reduced to... the lesbian witches from the Acolyte. It's enough to make me miss Jar Jar
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@DW2 They had a few priorities that precluded that. They made sense at the time, only having seen what a mess Disney made of 7-9 do they seem like easily dismissed quibbles:
Thrawn trilogy would have required either CG de-aging the original cast or recasting, the former insanely expensive at the time, the latter infuriating. It's not like Young Indiana Jones had a big following.
Adapting an existing work would remove the 'OMG what happens next?' element, destroying that viral 'who killed Laura Palmer?' marketing energy.
The original story was actually wrapped up in Return of the Jedi so you had to spin up a new one anyway, and Disney wanted the flexibility to create brand new protagonists.
All reasonable... if you don't BLOW IT.
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@judgedread @DW2 > if you don't BLOW IT
Now that you mention it I didn't start to think hard about the Thrawn trilogy until all three films were crapped out and I wondered why, if they were going to make retread anyway, why didn't they use the novels so that at least the retread wouldn't suck.
I'd quibble slightly over the actor's age as it would have been better and easier to move Zahn's trilogy a couple decades into the future rather than what they ended up doing.
Judge Dread
NoDoxGregBrady
Kenny Blankenship
EvilSandmich
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