Lance Quazar
Freakzoid
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2014
- Messages
- 50
- Reaction score
- 1
Add on.. i want to be clear. i'm NOT trying to attack, nor argue with you. I'm actualy quite enjoying our conversation, and Am in no way trying to bully, berate, demean, insult, or otherwise mistreat you. i know i've got some strong opinons, and i can come across that way. I also may simply be privy to information you don't have, as for me, the EU WAS my star wars growing up. Born in 82, i missed the theatrical OT, and grew up with the comics, novels and etc. some were great, some were very VERY bad, but to me, THAT was my star wars. THAT, and the films on VHS.
I appreciate your comments and I'm also enjoying the exchange. I don't feel insulted or attacked in any way and I hope you don't, either!
What my real point is is this - the current EU is small potatoes for Disney. yes, they have a "story committee" who is going to try to make some sense ou the big, crazy mess which is about to get much bigger and crazier with new films down the pike that happen at the SAME TIME as so much of the EU. I don't think Disney is going to chuck it out of spite or even just out of the ease of a clean slate.
However, when I talk about the film team, I'm talking about not just JJ (whose influence Disney will definitely keep at least somewhat of a leash on, as they have a franchise to protect) but the entire creative AND corporate team behind the films.
Yes, merchandising is MASSIVE and it's why Disney is so interested in the property. Not JUST to make billion dollar grossing films, but to merchandise the ever-loving-heck out of those films.
That said, they DO have a vested interest in trying to make those films at least "good." So my point is that there's no way they are going to tread lightly around EU continuity if it gets in the way of them telling the kind of story they want to tell. That goes for JJ and Kennedy and everyone else they hire now and in the future to make films.
And, while JJ is a "hired gun" in this sense, he also is an extremely powerful writer/director/producer so there's no way his contract doesn't include the ability to at least shape some of the material to his liking. He wouldn't have signed a deal otherwise if he was just going to be told to point and shoot and shut up.
Regarding the book rights, Disney still has to share the publishing haul with whatever the current publishers are. And who knows what those deals are like? Maybe they have already expired and Disney can reprint, say, the Thrawn trilogy with their own publishing imprints. But maybe not. (I honestly don't know, I'm just talking theoreticals.) It's the same situation with Dark Horse. Disney is yanking the license so their own company can publish it. Maybe the current EU publishers have longer contracts on existing EU? I don't have those answers. But, in the abstract, Disney is NOT interested in promoting Star Wars products they don't fully own. (And there will always be SOME elements of Star Wars they don't fully own, as the first film will forever be owned by Fox, for instance.) All that is to say, they don't see the old EU as an important factor in their new plans.
They don't see "the Clone Wars" as an important factor, which is why it's gone, too. Their plan is to forge ahead with products that are 100% theirs and maximize the crap out of them. Yeah, SOME Star Wars books were successful twenty years ago (mostly because they were the first SW books and were novel - no pun intended.) But the revenue for NJO or Thrawn or whatever these days has got to be negligible compared to Disney's plans.