Lucas Update • Movie Of The Week & 50 Hours Written • September 2010

Topeka · **Bush Pilot** Joined: 23 Mar 2005 Posts: 1128

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.

darthpsychotic · Joined: 03 Jul 1971 Posts: 4269

thanks for the heads up

Mike_Droideka · Joined: 31 Jan 2005 Posts: 331 Location: Australia

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

E_CHU_TA! · Joined: 04 Aug 2004 Posts: 617

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?

darthpsychotic · Joined: 03 Jul 1971 Posts: 4269

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.

E_CHU_TA! · Joined: 04 Aug 2004 Posts: 617

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.