Jentasmic! on Lucasfilm Acquisition: Do’s and Don’ts for Disney

At Star Wars Weekends 2008

When news broke earlier this week about Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm, all my geeky internet feeds simultaneously exploded with joy and surprise. And I don’t just mean the Disney geeks. The anime geeks, the gaming geeks, the sci-fi geeks . . . everybody was freaking out. And almost everybody seemed overjoyed.

But I’m feeling a good bit more cautious about this acquisition. Sure, it could mean good things; I’ve enjoyed the results of Disney’s collaboration with Lucasfilm over the years. I’m a big fan of Star Tours 2.0, and had a great time at Star Wars Weekends. But I also fear there are many ways this could go wrong. From my Jentasmic! column today at StudiosCentral:

DO learn from your experience in the Pixar merger. The response to Brave from both critics and fans, plus the increasing reliance on sequels, has me a little worried that Pixar may be losing its identity as some of its key players have taken on significant roles in other areas of the Walt Disney Company. And I’m sure there’s plenty to be learned from the Marvel experience as well. Don’t be afraid to look squarely at your mistakes and learn from them. It’s equally important to look carefully at what you’ve done right, so you can do it again.

Head on over to StudiosCentral to read the rest. I promise you there’s a non-gratuitous mention of the Star Wars Holiday Special, which isn’t usually all that easy to pull off.

Dancing with the Star Wars Stars!

So wrong, it’s gotta be right! They almost lost me in the silliness of Luke and Leia dancing to We Are Family, but Amadala performing I Will Survive with Darth Vader brought things back to the sublimely ridiculous.

Two Star Wars Television Shows in the Works

From DarkHorizons.com:

Talking with Movieweb, Lucasfilm fan relations head Steve Sansweet dismissed the talk [of possible Star Wars TV movies] and cleared up the status of current projects.

“I can absolutely tell you that is not true… There are going to be two more Star Wars television series. One of them is well into production. That is Star Wars: Clone Wars. It’s a CG animated show, which we suspect will be on the air sometime next year. And then George and Rick McCullen were just now starting work on a live action series. A drama. That will probably be coming out in 2009 or 2010. He is actively at work on both of those. But the CG animated series is more adult. It has a lot of humor in it. It is very cinematic.”