Disney | Krypton Radio

Starting in 2015, Star Wars Every Year?

Apr 182013

by Gene Turnbow

In this 1977 image provided by 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, Imperial stormtroopers look for the lost droids in a scene from "Star Wars." The intergalactic adventure launched in theaters 35 years ago on May 25, 1977, introducing the world to The Force, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Princess Leia, Han Solo and a pair of loveable droids named R2-D2 and C-3PO. (20th Century-Fox Film Corporation)

In this 1997 image provided by 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, Imperial stormtroopers look for the lost droids in a scene from “Star Wars.” The intergalactic adventure launched in theaters 35 years ago on May 25, 1977, introducing the world to The Force, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Princess Leia, Han Solo and a pair of loveable droids named R2-D2 and C-3PO. This image, though, is from the Star Wars Special edition – the giveaway is the stormtrooper riding the dewback in the background, which did not appear in the original film. Thanks to Krypton Radio fan Zrath Smiley for catching the error!

Yesterday at CinemaCon, Disney Studios announced that starting in 2015 there is going to be a new Star Wars movie every year. They’ll start with the J.J. Abrams directed Episode VII in summer of 2015. The plan is to release a standalone spinoff the following year — probably one of the projects focusing on Boba Fett or Han Solo — and alternate between numerals and spinoffs from there.

Assuming the films are successful, this means the total number of Star Wars films will nearly double by summer 2019. Presumably, Disney is hoping that each of the spinoffs will form their own franchises, much like X-Men and The Avengers.

I’m sure a lot of Star Wars fans are excited about this, but what Disney is planning may turn out differently than planned, and here’s why:

Part of what makes Star Wars wonderful is that it’s exotic. What happens to our love of Christmas when it’s Christmas every day? Will a steady diet of Star Wars make it mundane and unappealing? It’s possible to oversell something.
There are already two major comic book companies duking it out with major blockbusters several times a year. How much action blockbuster appetite is there in the marketplace now, and can it support what’s already being done? What if the excitement for all this eye candy cools because of a glut of content in the next three years? Movie productions can’t turn on a dime when it takes two years to make one.
Disney is now driving the boat. The just laid off 150 of their own motion picture production staff, and gutted the 2D animation department. They effectively closed LucasArts as a software development company and it’s going to do nothing but licensing now. In the meantime, their CEO Bob Iger got a 20% raise in 2012. You can guess where his raise came from. How are they going to sustain production at this pace? Clearly they’re backing away from making their own movies and plan to farm out all the work. But to whom (see the next bullet point)?
The VFX industry over the last few months has just imploded due to predatory business practices on the part of the major studios, driving many into bankruptcy. Big names like Dreamworks, Digital Domain, Rhythm & Hues and Disney itself have laid off workers by the thousands. Where are the effects for these shows going to come from? Rhythm & Hues, for example, won two Oscars and two BAFTA awards for their work on Life of Pi – and while they were accepting their awards in London, that same evening in Los Angeles they were getting the “don’t bother coming in to work on Monday” phone calls and being stiffed for their last paychecks.

There’s an elephant in this room. Production companies, specifically Disney, are pushing away everything that isn’t a sweet spot profit center in their business models. This is short sighted and, in the end, self-destructive.

There is a very very large difference between what Disney says they’re going to do, and what may actually happen. We can hope that all goes well – but there are many hurdles to overcome, and careers are in jeopardy as we speak.

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LucasArts Gone, Star Wars Reboot Even More Likely?

Krypton Radio No Responses »

Apr 052013

Characters from the games created by the venerable LucasArts games division.

by Michael Brown

Characters from the games created by the venerable LucasArts games division.

The Star Wars Expanded Universe, as told in countless novels, comics, video games, and television series, may be ready to be frozen in carbonite and hung in Mickey Mouse’s throne room. Disney announced Wednesday morning that they would be shutting down LucasArts, Lucasfilm’s game developer, and laying off about 150 people. Disney says it will still use the LucasArts name to license games, but the studio itself is no more.

One interesting piece of fallout from the dissolution of LucasArts as a developer is that the source code for two Star Wars games, Jedi Academy and its predecessor, Jedi Outcast, developed by Raven Software for Activision, have now been made available under the Gnu Public License as open source projects. Now anyone can download it free.

This isn’t the first time Disney has bought a going concern only to kill it outright later. In 1996, Disney bought Dreamquest Images to replace their own visual effects division, renamed it as the Secret Labs, and released a single movie using their services in 2000 called Dinosaur. Rumors of severe mismanagement of the facility abounded at the time, and Disney began to pass over their own facility for effects work. The general consensus reported from various employees was that Disney simply had no idea how to run a division like Secret Labs. They closed it that year. The same thing may have happened with LucasArts.

LucasArts, who had brought gamers Dark Forces, X-Wing, Star Wars: Galaxies, and the immensely popular Knights of the Old Republic duology, had been working on Star Wars: First Assault and 1313, a bounty hunter story, presumably about Boba Fett, that took place in Coruscant’s seedy Undercity. 1313 had been universally acclaimed and designed with next-gen consoles in mind. But even after all of the accolades and the substantial amount of money spent on the game, Disney dissolved the game developer. Disney is saying publicly that current games could be licensed to different developers but, according to one source, that is very unlikely.

Add to this the decision to end The Clone Wars outright instead of moving it to Disney XD as originally thought, and the rumors that Disney will take the Star Wars comic license from Dark Horse to give to Marvel, whose track record with licensed products is less than stellar, it certainly appears that the old guard is being swept away and the House of Mouse is paving the way for a Disney-style reboot, leaving some fans echoing Lando Calrissian’s sentiment: “This deal is getting worse all the time.”

J.J. Abrams To Direct ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’

Movies, Star Trek, Star Wars No Responses »

Jan 252013

Television & film director J.J. Abrams

Sources have confirmed the “Star Trek Into Darkness” filmmaker J. J. Abrams will helm the next “Star Wars” movie, the highly anticipated installment in the landmark franchise scheduled to reach theaters in 2015. Argo director Ben Affleck had also been under consideration, but was likely a fallback choice. Abrams was courted heavily by producer Kathleen Kennedy to take the job, despite his having been very public not wanting to direct a Star Wars movie. It is this reticence, combined with his somewhat liberal interpretation of the Star Trek universe is giving some fans pause on the news.

Due out in 2015, Star Wars: Episode VII will be the first new Star Wars movie since 2005?s Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith. The screenplay will be written by Michael Arndt, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3. Simon Kinberg and Lawrence Kasdan have been tapped to write Star Wars projects as well, but it’s unclear whether their scripts will be for future episodes or for films outside the official trilogy. The upcoming trilogy of new films was announced October 30 of last year when the Walt Disney Co. went public with its plans to acquire Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion.

Abrams’ other space-based franchise sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness, comes out May 17, 2012.

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Video Of The Day: Owl City’s “When Can I See You Again?”

Video Of the Day No Responses »

Nov 272012

One of the breakout hits of the Thanksgiving season crop of movie releases has been Wreck It Ralph from Disney Studios, widely hailed as the “Toy Story of video games”. It’s very hard to keep one’s cynical attitude about life watching a film like Wreck It Ralph, and just as hard to do that while listening to the irrepressibly uplifting music from the sound track. We’re going to be featuring a lot of music from this movie on Krypton Radio, but here’s one to whet your appetite: Owl City’s When Can I See You Again?

We know that a lot of our listeners and readers are Disney fans, and despite all the changes in the iconic, legendary media company, one thing has remained constant: the continual unshakeable message that it’s worthwhile to be inspired, to look upward instead of downward all the time, and that every single sunrise can bring new hope. It’s no wonder that we’re instinctively attracted to the message repeated over and over in all these Disney films, and by inference, in the music from them. That’s one of the underlying themes of Krypton Radio too – we try to play music that reminds you of the best in yourself.

Do we believe in hope? Always. And forever.

Enjoy.

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Joss Whedon To Helm ABC’s New S.H.I.E.L.D Series

Comics, Fandom, Movies, Television No Responses »

Aug 282012

Joss Whedon and the Avengers

Earlier this month we told you that Joss Whedon, famed director and writer of the Avengers movie, had been signed by Disney and ABC to do an Avengers themed television series – but we didn’t know what it was. Now we do. ABC is writing Whedon a fat check to produce the pilot for their new live action dramatic series S.H.I.E.L.D. Normally pilots are produced to sell the show to the studio and/or potential advertisers, but in this case it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that it’s going to be produced. The pilot goes into production immediately, and it’s Marvel Studios’ first TV venture.

In the Marvel cinematic universe, S.H.I.E.L.D. stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. Thank goodness for verbiage-trimming acronyms. We’d never get through that if they had to say it more than once per show.

Joss Whedon and his brother Jed, along with his wife Maurissa Tancharoen (the team behind Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and Dollhouse) will be writing and doing executive producing on the project. Whedon himself will likely be directing episodes as his schedule permits.

We don’t yet know which Marvel comics characters might appear on S.H.I.E.L.D., but with Joss Whedon at the wheel fans will be lining up to find out.

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“The Hulk” Set To Smash Back On Television By 2013

Animation, Comics No Responses »

May 172012

Krypton Radio Newsire

Ready or not – the raging green beast is coming back to television by 2013

It’s been confirmed that Marvel’s The Hulk will be returning to television as a live action series after more than thirty years off the air, which is probably no surprise to fans since the record breaking success of Joss Whedon‘s The Avengers this year. Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno starred in the first successful series which ran for ten-years from 1972-82, and the return of the Hulk is being planned by ABC television and Marvel, in an attempt to cash in on the box office ratings. Few details are known at this point, but The Hulk has beat out a slew of other proposed superhero shows, including a Punisher series and many others.

It’s also unknown if there will be a tie-in between the movie storyline and the series, or if ABC will attempt a fresh approach. It’s more than likely a safe bet that the TV series will feature a CGI Hulk to match the new accepted look of our hero, but to what extent is still unknown. Will The Hulk succeed where others failed? It’s too soon to know, as we saw the attempted Wonder Woman series fail to get out of the starting gate after the filming of the pilot episode. It’s also currently unknown if any other characters from The Avengers movie will be given consideration for a TV series, but there’s always hope.

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Ultimate Spider-Man and Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes April 1 on Disney XD

Animation, Comics, Superhero, Video Of the Day No Responses »

Mar 282012

Can’t wait until April 1st to catch your favorite Super Hero in action? Check out Marvel’s new Ultimate Spider-Man trailer debuting on Marvel.com! Watch as Nick Fury offers Spider-Man the biggest opportunity of his life: to join S.H.I.E.L.D., take on evil villains, and learn what it takes to become the ULTIMATE Spider-Man. Get a fresh look at Spidey’s action-packed adventures, new Spidey Tech, and special guest stars to excite fans and bring everyone’s favorite Wallcrawler to the small screen like never before! The series premieres April 1 at 11am/10c inside Marvel Universe on Disney XD!

The series premiere was shown at WonderCon in Anaheim a couple of weekends ago. If you couldn’t make it there, at least you won’t have long to wait! We think it looks pretty good, and we like the fresh casting of Spider-Man as a brash kid who’s not completely sure of himself yet. He’s not the seasoned, confident hero – he’s only now coming to terms with what it means to be Spider-Man, and has taken a first step into a larger world. Unfortunately that larger world seems to come with built-in toy marketing plugs, and traditionally Spider-Man hasn’t been the vehicle of many gadgets. Hint to Disney – it’s not his gadgets that make him a superhero.

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightest Heroes is back for season two, and while this is welcome, and appears to pick up from where Season 1 left off, we’re looking at this and can’t help comparing it to the Avengers movie – and it’s not holding up well in the comparison. It’s apples and oranges, yes, but there’s no way people aren’t going ot make that comparison anyway. Still, the story lines have been good, and worth the time it takes to watch the episodes. We’re hoping to see better than this trailer, though.

On April 1, we’ll get to see both shows. Of the two, Ultimate Spider-Man rocks more.

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John Carter: One Step Back, One Step Forward

Books, Comics, Fantasy / Horror, Movies, Science Fiction No Responses »

Mar 012012

The original cover art by Frank E. Schoonover for "A Princess of Mars"

Edgar Rice Burroughs Family Aghast at Comic Books, But Movie Thunders Forward

By Gene Turnbow

The original cover art by Frank E. Schoonover for "A Princess of Mars". Schoonover provided lush illustrations on color plates for the original published version of the book, and was famous for his work.

MANHATTAN (CN) – In the world of copyrights and trademarks, what you’re allowed to do depends often on where you happen to be standing at the moment. Edgar Rice Burroughs created iconic literary figures in Tarzan, John Carter and Conan the Barbarian, then formed a corporation in 1923 to manage the properties. While many of the original works have now lapsed into the public domain here in the United States, it’s a different matter abroad where copyright terms are significantly longer. Additionally, the copyright on the text of the books itself is separate from the trademarks on the characters, and trademarks and copyrights have to be applied for and maintained in various countries around the world. There is no single uniform copyright or trademark law. What has the Burroughs family up in arms and in the courtroom this time is the claim that three comic-book publishers violate its copyrights and trademarks on “Tarzan” and “John Carter of Mars,” sometimes in books with pornographic covers. They’ve sued Dynamic Forces Entertainment, Dynamite Entertainment and Savage Tales Entertainment, in Federal Court.

Burroughs Inc. claims the defendants violated its rights in a series of comic books “bearing identical and confusingly similar marks – namely, ‘Lord of the Jungle,’ ‘Warlord of Mars,’ ‘Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris,’ and ‘Warlord of Mars: Fall of Barsoom.’” The works are still protected by copyright in certain foreign jurisdictions, so they aren’t allowed to sell the comics in those places. Ironically, selling them in the U.S. is less of a problem – except for the fact that some of the covers depict Deja Thoris topless, and some of the interior illustrations are described by Burroughs, Inc. as “pornographic”. They want the publication stopped, and the materials destroyed. It’s kind of puzzling when you think about it, though, because except for a couple of strategically placed bangles, the first time John Carter sees Deja Thoris in the original book from 1917, she’s stark naked.

In the meantime, the John Carter movie is building some pretty nice buzz in the modern world ruled by science fiction, fantasy and comic book fans, but the film may be in trouble anyway. The suits responsible for marketing the film don’t understand it themselves. According to their polls, the demographics are saying that women of all ages unilaterally hate it, and that about half the people polled didn’t even know there was a movie. To me this sounds more like PR fail than movie fail – for example, the PR people at Disney in charge of the film took “of Mars” out of the title because they thought that it sounded too “science fiction-y” and that this would turn people off from wanting to go see it. Take away the fact that it’s set on Mars, and your trailers are full of giant slavering beasts, impossible airships and six limbed aliens as characters suddenly stops making sense. Heads are already starting to roll over at Disney over the mishandling of the PR for the film, and it’s likely to be a fan favorite but a commercial failure.

The other problem is that the publicity people have been saying that “the geek community is not responding”. I would counter with this question: “How in hell would they know?” They have obviously failed to connect with the geek community in any meaningful way, because if they had, they would have understood why the series of books was so popular and why the Mars connection was so relevant to the storyline’s universe – and they would have understood how to talk to fans about how profound and monumental a presence in popular culture a film like this could be.

No wonder the trailers have been confusing the public, who are trying to make sense of it and failing – but if you know anything about the original material, you’re bouncing up and down in your chair and have John Carter on your must-see list for the summer. For everyone’s sake, I hope the film succeeds despite, rather than because of, the people who were responsible for getting the word out. Have a look at the trailer and tell me what you think.

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