24 September 2007

Clone Wars Interview

TV Guide has published a two part interview with George Lucas about his upcoming Star Wars TV series. Part one, part two. It’s crazy what he can pull off with his vast fortune. He’s producing each series in its entirety before shopping it around to anyone to actually put it on the air. Fake Steve points out that we’re just about at the stage where we don’t even need shows to be broadcast. Just sell them on iTunes and DVD directly to consumers. Of course, you can do that anyway and still make money selling ads on broadcast TV, but if you avoid the networks you don’t have to answer to them creatively, either. What I’m not sold on, though, and I think the newer Star Wars movies show this, is that we’d be better off leaving everything to the creators. Sure, studios often have stupid notes and really do mess with shows, but they also deal with what works and what doesn’t all the time, so there is some advantage to having their input. If a show’s totally falling flat for some reason, you can sometimes fix the problems by bringing in script doctors and audience data. If Lucas has already produced the whole thing, you’re stuck with it. The problem with the new Star Wars wasn’t that they never needed to be made, it’s that no one was around with the force to make Lucas to change stuff.