George Lucas comes to mind as an example this week. Am amazed he’s going out of his way to buy back a franchise that almost did him in, all for the fans.
So instead of more evenly distributing the profit from the franchise to everyone who contributed, he’s going to hand the wealth to an already obscenely wealthy corporation so that he can have control over it again?
He owned the IP. He ensured that he’d retain merchandise rights and sequel rights via his contract for the original Star Wars film. He made his billions off of that. Mostly merchandise. Then he sold his company LucasFilm (along with those rights) to Disney in 2012 for a few billion in cash and a few billion in Disney stock (making him one of the largest shareholders).
I wasn’t saying he didn’t, in fact that’s a part of the point. If doing all that and selling to Disney was advantageous, buying it back would not be. As it stands right now, he’s going against the billionaire director playbook here.
If the people who worked on making money from the Star Wars franchise generated literally billions of dollars in value for George Lucas’s company and George still has billions of dollars then no, he did not distribute those billions to those people. How do you not understand? I’ll simplify this for you.
If I have 1000 employees and my company rakes in $4 billion in revenue, I’m not a good guy even if I give them $1,000,000 each and keep the remaining…
$3,000,000,000. That would imply that I think my work was 3,000x more important and valuable then their work. I guarantee that some people that helped Lucas make billions of dollars were paid as little as possible, with many likely in foreign countries with much lower minimum wages.
Society likes to pretend that rich people earn their money. What actually happens is that rich people create a situation in which they are disproportionately rewarded for work done by many other people. Yes, it’s likely they did some work too (occasionally even good work), but not work proportional to their compensation. The fact that they insisted that they be the ones retaining a disproportionately large percentage of the surplus value is very telling.
Just because one person involved has billions of dollars doesn’t mean none of the other people do either, plus some of that money without a doubt has come from other projects which few if any of the people involved in his flagship ones were involved in.
Disney messed up so bad with Star Wars, especially with The Acolyte, that he’s talking about buying back the franchise, something that seems to run counter to his wealth (since he sold it to Disney in the first place) and his patience (considering, say, the reaction to the prequels at the time he had the full helm). It comes off as an entirely popular demand move.
He didn’t direct E.T. or remade it and didn’t remake any of the Star Wars movies. And people are really going to hold Howard the Duck as a personally defining misdeed, aren’t they (ignoring that his first associated movie was American Graffiti)? The Star Wars prequels didn’t really ruin anything, they just added to it in a way that wasn’t as interesting as hoped.
Disney, who bought it all, was the one who made the Star Wars sequels (episodes 7, 8, and 9), that and the various TV series, all of which milked opportunities that did not technically exist, which might be indicated in the fact that the sequels looked almost identical to the original trilogy plot-wise. The thing to remember here is George Lucas is willing to go against his better judgment and his own indulgence so-to-speak to prevent further collapse.
And this is coming from someone who didn’t care for any of the movies.
My bad E.T. was Steven Spielberg. They worked so closely I get confused, for example the abomination Indiana Jones “The crystal skull” was directed by S.S. but based on a story by G.L. I didn’t care for the remasters of the original Star wars trilogy. Is it because it changed my nostalgia? Highly possible, but han shot first lol. I thought the sequels were cheesy kids movies, but I understand they weren’t made for me so I’m not gonna judge.
That’s called being a good and tolerant person, letting kids like kids movies. Just like Lemmy, do I block communities absolutely, do I down vote them, no let people like what they like.
George Lucas comes to mind as an example this week. Am amazed he’s going out of his way to buy back a franchise that almost did him in, all for the fans.
So instead of more evenly distributing the profit from the franchise to everyone who contributed, he’s going to hand the wealth to an already obscenely wealthy corporation so that he can have control over it again?
You need to own the franchise first. Unless I misunderstand you.
Where do you think he got his billions?
He owned the IP. He ensured that he’d retain merchandise rights and sequel rights via his contract for the original Star Wars film. He made his billions off of that. Mostly merchandise. Then he sold his company LucasFilm (along with those rights) to Disney in 2012 for a few billion in cash and a few billion in Disney stock (making him one of the largest shareholders).
So yeah, he did own the franchise first.
I wasn’t saying he didn’t, in fact that’s a part of the point. If doing all that and selling to Disney was advantageous, buying it back would not be. As it stands right now, he’s going against the billionaire director playbook here.
Or he could have distributed the billions he made, as he was making them, to more equitably pay everyone who’s work generated that wealth.
That’s my point.
Did he not? Are people not supposed to pay their employees? I don’t understand.
If the people who worked on making money from the Star Wars franchise generated literally billions of dollars in value for George Lucas’s company and George still has billions of dollars then no, he did not distribute those billions to those people. How do you not understand? I’ll simplify this for you.
If I have 1000 employees and my company rakes in $4 billion in revenue, I’m not a good guy even if I give them $1,000,000 each and keep the remaining… $3,000,000,000. That would imply that I think my work was 3,000x more important and valuable then their work. I guarantee that some people that helped Lucas make billions of dollars were paid as little as possible, with many likely in foreign countries with much lower minimum wages.
Society likes to pretend that rich people earn their money. What actually happens is that rich people create a situation in which they are disproportionately rewarded for work done by many other people. Yes, it’s likely they did some work too (occasionally even good work), but not work proportional to their compensation. The fact that they insisted that they be the ones retaining a disproportionately large percentage of the surplus value is very telling.
Just because one person involved has billions of dollars doesn’t mean none of the other people do either, plus some of that money without a doubt has come from other projects which few if any of the people involved in his flagship ones were involved in.
What’s he doing? I’m not seeing anything about him in news.
Disney messed up so bad with Star Wars, especially with The Acolyte, that he’s talking about buying back the franchise, something that seems to run counter to his wealth (since he sold it to Disney in the first place) and his patience (considering, say, the reaction to the prequels at the time he had the full helm). It comes off as an entirely popular demand move.
What a great guy he ruined e.t. and Star wars with remakes… Made the movie Howard the Duck. These are all basically war crimes.
He didn’t direct E.T. or remade it and didn’t remake any of the Star Wars movies. And people are really going to hold Howard the Duck as a personally defining misdeed, aren’t they (ignoring that his first associated movie was American Graffiti)? The Star Wars prequels didn’t really ruin anything, they just added to it in a way that wasn’t as interesting as hoped.
Disney, who bought it all, was the one who made the Star Wars sequels (episodes 7, 8, and 9), that and the various TV series, all of which milked opportunities that did not technically exist, which might be indicated in the fact that the sequels looked almost identical to the original trilogy plot-wise. The thing to remember here is George Lucas is willing to go against his better judgment and his own indulgence so-to-speak to prevent further collapse.
And this is coming from someone who didn’t care for any of the movies.
My bad E.T. was Steven Spielberg. They worked so closely I get confused, for example the abomination Indiana Jones “The crystal skull” was directed by S.S. but based on a story by G.L. I didn’t care for the remasters of the original Star wars trilogy. Is it because it changed my nostalgia? Highly possible, but han shot first lol. I thought the sequels were cheesy kids movies, but I understand they weren’t made for me so I’m not gonna judge.
By that logic, why judge any of them? They weren’t made for the people who didn’t like them, right?
That’s called being a good and tolerant person, letting kids like kids movies. Just like Lemmy, do I block communities absolutely, do I down vote them, no let people like what they like.
That’s different from judging someone or their present decision-making based on them or saying interest in them has objectively negative implications.