September 22 2010

IGN • Lucas Comments on Why The Series is On Hold

• MOVIE OF THE WEEK
• 50 HOURS WRITTEN




LUCAS TRANSCRIPT:

• Well right now we don't know - We have a MOVIE OF THE WEEK and 50 HOURS WRITTEN - all done - ready to go. It's just that we can't figure out a way of doing it for less than $50 MILLION per EPISODE and obviously we can't afford to do that.

• So I'm not going to compromise on the quality of it - so we just have to keep working on the technology to see if we can improve ways of getting the story told without it costing a fortune.

• I think it'll advance just like everything else advances - so the price for everything is going down. We're shooting it with much more sophisticated cameras and we're working on ways - more inexpensive ways - of doing - all the special effects and that sort of thing.

thanks for the heads up

[flash width=640 height=385]http://www.youtube.com/v/loLbJpurPRY?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&hd=1[/flash]

That is great - thanks for the update. At least it's not bad news.

So, at $50 million per show, a standard series run of 22 episodes per year for six years would require $6.6 billion in revenue in order to breakeven.

Financially and logistically, at what point does it make more sense to turn this project into a series of standalone films or a high-end animated series?

With 50 scripts and a (tv) movie of a the week written the series is ready to go. All that is needed is a network or studio step up and bankroll this.

The $50 million quantity perhaps was an exaggeration to illustrate the costing issue - though according to recent articles the average movie costs $100mill to make • $100mill : 2hour movie :: $50mill : 1hour tvseries.

Lucas maybe publicly trying to get potential production areas to subsidize the project with incentives like he did in Czech Republic.

Even if the figure is exaggerated, it's still way out of line with current production standards. Presently, a high-end show like Mad Men costs around $2 million per episode. The Lost pilot (which is considered to be the most expensive pilot ever) cost between $10 and $14 million.

For reference, the production costs of TPM, AOTC, and ROTS were $115 million, $120 million, and $113 million respectively.