Does George Lucas Expect Writers to Cross The Strike Line For Him?
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Entertainment Weekly is reporting that none other than George Lucas himself will be trolling the deadly streets of L.A. looking for writers to pitch ideas and get assignments for writing the first 13 episodes of his planned live-action Star Wars television series. There's only about 13,000,000 problems with his plan but I'll save you a couple of years of reading and list the most prominent ones that have the potential to delay the production and ruin the series altogether.The Strike - The contract between the Writers Guild of America and the studios expires on October 31st, and all signs point to a strike being called within a week of that date. Lucas intends to bring his booty of freelancers back to Skywalker Ranch in November for the collective idea hashing party, which would obviously be impossible if there is a strike on. Industry writers and neophytes alike know about this and the fact that Lucas wants to press forward anyway makes me wonder if the guy has ventured outside his fortress anytime in the past six months.
Under strike rules, writers are not allowed to do anything related to writing for anyone. You can't pitch ideas, work on something you've already been paid to do, turn in already finished work, you can't even enter the building of a company that is being struck.
Whatever Lucas is playing at, the strike is going to delay it. Any hope of getting it into production in February of 2008 is a nothing but a fantasy at this point.
Freelance Series Don't Work - Lucas may be involved with the pitching and may very well be handing out assignments, but he's no show runner. This is a guy that for all his accomplishments has never run a show, and that's plainly evident by the way he's trying to throw this one together. Every writer brings a different voice to the table in what they write no matter how much they try to stay inside the box. This is why shows have story editors, senior story editors, and write collectively.
You don't want each episode having a different pace and feel such that it feels more like 24 different shows across the span of a single season, but that's what Lucas is going to get with his plan. He wants 6-13 freelance writers who will go off and write their own episode independent of Lucas and the rest of the "team", and even once those scripts filter back under Lucas' control, it'll be a grand mess and time sink trying to forge all those scripts into a single coherent series.
Worse yet, Lucas wants to employ a number of foreign writers to work on the series. That's problematic because hardly any other country does television the way American's do it, and that's neither a compliment nor an insult - it's a recipe for inconsistency.
There's a reason that hits in the United States are also #1 hits overseas, and it's not because Americans are prettier. We've crafted a fine machine for producing consistent and challenging entertainment while the rest of the world struggles to catch up. Foreign writers, especially television writers, aren't going to know how to work in that environment and unless Lucas gets the very best of the best from other countries, he won't necessarily even be getting talented writers in the first place.
This entire plan reeks of a guy too used to having enough power in the movie system that he can do anything he wants that thinks he can waltz in and play it the same way in the television system. His status and celebrity will certainly give him that opportunity, but it'll fail him. His system of directors being the creative force (who isn't but just thinks that they are) is flipped in TV, where writers are king.
If Lucas thinks he can farm out the writing and then piece it all together himself when it's time to start shooting, waiting to inject his vision and his style months after the time for creativity should have been long since baked, he's got a big shock coming in the form of having the first and only live-action Star Wars series creamed in the ratings by Who's Smarter Than a Fifth Grader.
End Run Around The Networks - According to EW, Lucas wanted to shoot an entire season on his own terms before even trying to find a network that was interested in sitting on the sidelines and basically morphing into the role of a bank. Microsoft thought they could get away with that when they commissioned a script to be written for Halo with the intention of selling the rights to the game and the script as a packaged, unalterable deal.
Halo has been stuck in development hell and will likely never make it out of there because no studio wanted to cough up the money to make the film without having any kind of substantive creative say (now they know how feature writers feel.)
So to would be the situation with this series, no matter how much hype there is and regardless of who it has pushing it from behind, no network is going to agree to fund and air a series post-production.
Source: Entertainment Weekly
October 21, 2007 12:56 PM | Reply
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles - This is a series that Lucas created, executive produced, and wrote for. While it was well regarded by some and won an impressive cache of awards, it wasn't exactly a barn burner with the expectations a Star Wars series would have - it's not even remotely comparable.
Lucas didn't write every script and wasn't as involved with that series as he will be this one, and television isn't the same as it was in 1992. The experience for Lucas will be totally unlike anything even he has been through before, television is far more competitive and the pressure a lot higher than at anytime in the past.
Foreign Writers - Yes, they wouldn't have to honor a guild strike as non-members, but they would be obliged to join the guild after working on this project and would be punished for crossing the picket line once they've done so. If they refused, they would never be able to work in American television or film again.
The guild is being extremely strict about the strike rules this year, much more so than at any other time in their history.
My point about the quality of writing outside the U.S. and how much of a negative impact this would have cannot be stressed enough and in many ways is probably the most critical aspect of it all.
That kind of "spice" is a recipe for disaster, for all the reasons I've outlined above. Foreign television writers are not ready for something like this, if you don't believe it, look at how American shows are absolutely pulverizing local shows in foreign markets. If foreign productions were capable of it, they'd be doing it already.
It's George Lucas, You Idiot! - Lucas is a seasoned and extremely talented film maker, and that doesn't translate at all to television. TV is littered with failed super-star film hyphenates that couldn't make the crossover. Jim Cameron and Spielberg are but two who have tried, only to be run over by the networks at the first sign of trouble.
George Lucas will be no different, especially if he lands at either Fox or NBC. The pressure to perform will be intense, and no amount of experience in film will make that easier.
The wisest thing Lucas could do is let an experienced showrunner from a serial drama run things until he's better prepared, give up the silly dream of having an international staff of writers unless he wants bland boring scripts, and don't try to pull it off during a strike.
Thoughts?
October 21, 2007 2:02 PM | Reply
October 25, 2007 10:57 AM | Reply
Twilight Zone
Outer Limits
Both shows were different every week. And both did very well. I for one would LOVE a Star Wars based "freelance" show. If there is any base story line out there already that would do well in this format it is Star Wars. Just look at how successful the expanded universe books have been.
There are so many fringe characters and worlds in the Star Wars saga that a "show" could run for years, and years.
Just one Star Wars geeks thoughts.
Tom Frack