E7 Closer Look PT II: The Star Wars Brain-Trust.

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In Part I of the E7 Closer Look series, I examined why JJ Abrams is the prefect director to set-up the Sequel Trilogy. In this article we’ll take a closer look at the talented brain-trust helping JJ execute Disney’s master plan . . . after the jump!

 

Disney’s master plan has been revealed for some time now, as evidenced by George Lucas’ comment that they’ll be “making Star Wars for the next 100 years.” While that might be a tongue-in-cheek exaggeration of Disney’s plans to “milk the franchise,” there can certainly be no doubt Disney has very ambitious plans. As it turns out, George was slightly off by about sixty years as Disney revealed in a 2013 Financial Report and Shareholder Letter:

“Intangible assets primarily consist of intellectual property based on the Star Wars franchise with an estimated useful life of approximately 40 years. The goodwill reflects the value to Disney from leveraging Lucasfilm intellectual property across our distribution channels, taking advantage of Disney’s established global reach.”

 

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As of the writing of this article, the immediate master plan includes the long-awaited Sequel Trilogy, consisting of Episodes VII, VIII & IX, as well as three Stand Alone movies, and the animated TV series Star Wars: Rebels. It’s an ambitious plan, which must depart from George’s methods of three year cycles to write, pre-produce, and then shoot the film. In fact Disney plans to release a movie every year as so announced by Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn at last year’s CinemaCon in Las Vegas:

“Star Wars: Episode VII” will be released in summer 2015, Horn said, and will be followed by the next two films alternating every other year.

 

In case you’re keeping score at home, here’s the intended schedule with the rumored TITLES:

2015 = Episode VII
2016 = Spinoff #1 – BOBA FETT
2017 = Episode VIII
2018 = Spinoff #2 – HAN SOLO
2019 = Episode IX
2020 = Spinoff #3 – RED FIVE

 

In order for this schedule to work it necessitates a large group of people employed to envision and fastidiously plan the story ahead of time, another departure from the singular vision of the franchise’s creator George Lucas. To this end Lucasfilm Ltd. has formed its first ever story group:

Under Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy’s direction, the company for the first time ever has formed a story group to oversee and coordinate all Star Wars creative development.

“We have an unprecedented slate of new Star Wars entertainment on the horizon,” said Kennedy. “We’re set to bring Star Wars back to the big screen, and continue the adventure through games, books, comics, and new formats that are just emerging. This future of interconnected storytelling will allow fans to explore this galaxy in deeper ways than ever before.”

 

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This unheralded, but vastly important, Star Wars story group — A.K.A. “The brain trust” for the purpose of this article — OFFICIALLY consists of Carrie Beck, Diana Williams, Leland Chee, and Pablo Hidalgo. However, it should be noted that both Lawrence Kasdan, who was rumored to be involved with one of the spinoff films, is obviously involved with the story group as is Simon Kinberg who is likewise rumored to be involved with a spinoff. This is summed-up nicely in a recent Empire Online article:

To really play in the same universe, information and cooperation have to evolve into consultation and discussion. Abrams might leave the franchise once he relaunches it, but the three young directors coming in behind, all sharing similar indie backgrounds, seem like the kind of guys who might work together to at least some degree. When does cooperation, and a sharing of story plans, shade into something more actively constructive?

 

Meanwhile Kennedy herself, and writers like Simon Kinberg (Star Wars Rebels and reportedly one of the standalone projects) and Lawrence Kasdan (Episode VII and reportedly another standalone film) are all at work on different parts of the franchise. These people are likely to be involved to an extent in all the films, beyond the degree one might expect of a normal writer or producer, because they all see a duty to the wider franchise beyond the individual film.

 

Essentially, the writers and directors brought on board to create new Star Wars, are part of the story group. So now we have the four official members of the group, Abrams, Kasdan, and Kinberg, and now Gary Whitta, Gareth Edwards, Josh Trank and presumably Rian Johnson (although it should be note this wasn’t officially announced by Disney/LFL.) Eleven talented folks to include three of the hottest, young directorial names in Hollywood, bodes very well for us hardcore fans!

 

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This talented brain-trust’s job is not only to collaborate with each other in order to flesh-out all aspects of the story, but also to assure that the story isn’t lost in the clamor of all of the individual voices, each expressing their own desires. The directors will, of course, have plenty of input in the story creation and the vision for the style, but the story group will make sure that everything works continuity-wise. Their task is to (presumably) use the Lucas treatments as a jumping-off point in order to structure all of the various projects simultaneously. This system has worked well for such entities as Pixar and Marvel Cinema and is actually a method George envisioned as far back as the ’70’s:

“I would want to try and get some good directors, and see what their interpretation of the theme is […] It’s an interesting idea to see how people interpret the genre. It is a fun genre to play with. All the prototype stuff is done now […] I’ve put up the concrete slab of the walls and now everybody can have fun drawing the pictures and putting on the little gargoyles and doing all the really fun stuff.”

 

In order to meet Disney’s demanding schedule writers and directors have to be brought in early. Obviously, Abrams has his hands full with his own Star Wars project, thus the task of the story group is to bring the new creators up to speed. Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg have been on board probably as far back as November of 2012, although they weren’t officially announced until the January 25th, 2013 Abrams announcement. We also know, factually, that Kasdan has co-written Episode VII and Kinberg is producing Rebels. Sure, those may seem like different projects, especially since they’re different media and take place at different points in the timeline, BUT this is precisely why the story group exists, as writers and directors come and go, the brain-trust — Keepers of the Sacred Holocron — remain to protect canon continuity.

 

While Entertainment Weekly contends in their article . . .

“This new wave is the biggest challenge yet to the auteur theory of filmmaking, because it looks suspiciously like the brain trust approach is Hollywood’s new favourite method of moviemaking.”

 

The ‘brain-trust” method is far from a “trend,” but just an adapted style taken directly from the way TV shows have been run for ages and applying it to the feature film industry. Ultimately, Disney — with Marvel and Star Wars — essentially attacks the logistics of these franchises as though they are TV shows, ongoing for countless years, which makes perfect sense because that is exactly the intent; simply consider these “Universes” — Star Wars, Marvel, DC — Big Budget TV series, just not on TV, the next evolution of the Saturday Matinee serials of Flash Gordon-style that George envisioned when he attempted to purchase that brand. Prior to the recent glut of tent-pole franchises, such as X-Men and Transformers, the approach was “wait and see” as in: make the  movie and wait and see if it makes money before we commit to any more. Nowadays, movie studios secure franchises, or endlessly reboot franchises, with the specific intent of milking them irregardless of their realized profit margins.

 

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“Group think” has been employed by Hollywood for TV series for years. Highly successful shows like the X-Files, which helped spawn the meteroical rise of Breaking Bad’s Vince Gilligan, and the Disney/ABC/Bad Robot show LOST are two prime examples. I cite LOST because its a show I know well, but also because it employed strategies we’re witnessing now. LOST, executive produced by JJ Abrams, had a large story group as well, headed by show runners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. They employed a very talented team of writers and director/producers (Jack Bender and Stephen Williams) to work on the show. It was common for the production to be filming two scripts simultaneously, each directed by someone different, with the actors sometimes shuttling between productions. Then, of course, the writing team was already working ahead on their scripts. This mass assembly line approach was near-flawlessly executed for one of the most complicated continuities ever seen on television, what with all the flashbacks, flash forwards, and flash sideways. Yet it worked brilliantly!

 

Although our primary concern is feature films, the strategy today is extremely similar as we’re already witnessing it in action:

1- Lawrence Kasdan and JJ Abrams re-wrote a Michael Arndt script based on the Lucas treatments
2- JJ is directing the “Pilot Episode” of the soft reboot
3- Gareth Edwards and Gary Whitta are (presumably) already hard at work on the first spinoff, which MUST adhere to continuity every bit as much as the primary episodes
4- Josh Trank is (presumably) already working on the second spinoff, which I suspect is based on a script already written by either Kasdan or Kinberg or both
5- Rian Johnson has been rumored to be tapped to write/direct Episode VIII, launched by the Episode VII script AND . . .
6- RJ has been rumored to also be tapped to write the treatment for Episode IX, which makes perfect sense under this context as he’ll have to pass the torch to the next writer/director team

 

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The Star Wars story group, our beloved brain-trust, has similar challenges to endure. They must make sure that everything created going forward jibes well with the existing canon, as we all know so well, to ensure that Star Wars does NOT become X-Men. In last year’s EW Summer Preview they released a pretty interesting article about all of the major continuity mistakes within the X-Men franchise. Similarly, WN.com has provided an article about that very subject:

“For years, one of the main points of contention between X-Men fans and the franchise was that the fact that the continuity has continually been violated. That’s what happens when three films essentially beget two unrelated prequels, and when the director of the first two X-Men movies decides to leave the franchise. But now Bryan Singer is back, and with X-Men: Days Of Future Past he’s set to rectify some of these issues. Still, not every continuity mistake can be fixed, not every role recast, and not every piece will fit . For that, Singer is just gonna ask you to deal with it.”

 

Speaking as a FORMER reader of “X-Men” comics and FORMER fan of the early series, the disappointment about how poorly the franchise was handled, the glaring continuity issues, and the total sell-out for Wolverine, has turned-me-off completely. I haven’t paid to see an X-Men movie since the 2nd one, whatever that mess was called, and doubt I will ever go again. That’s how I deal with it. And that’s just X-Men! Speaking from experience, I can honestly say that fans can easily be turned-off by a studio, milking a brand for money, especially if said franchise is handled so shabbily a la X-Men. Now, IF Star Wars were to be handled so pathetically, Disney’s $4 Billion dollar cash cow would go up in smoke! This is why it is extremely important that the mother of all franchises, the crown jewel of entertainment media, the creme de la creme of Hollywood Blockbusters, be overseen by a large multitude of talented story-tellers. This is the BIGGEST DEAL, understatement, something that Bryan Singer and the FOX executives can’t even begin to comprehend.

 

In my article, “Is the Sequel Trilogy the End of the Series,” I expressed my suspicions about George’s statement that this is “the end of the trilogy” (of trilogies.) Obviously, this will remain to be seen. What we do know for certain is that Disney plans to produce more than six movies and, in fact, plans for the next 40 years of Star Wars entertainment. Whether or not they continue the current series, or start anew somewhere else in the timeline, or both, is a very important question. However, there is no question that the Star Wars brain-trust is the prefect caretaker for the most important mythological universe the modern world has ever witnessed.

 

In Part III of the “E7 Closer Look” series I’ll be taking a closer look at  The Women of Star Wars: Episode VII.

 

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24 thoughts on “E7 Closer Look PT II: The Star Wars Brain-Trust.

  • July 3, 2014 at 9:30 pm
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    F1R$T

    • July 3, 2014 at 9:47 pm
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      …To be fed to the Rancor.

    • July 3, 2014 at 10:40 pm
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      To escape the sarlacc

  • July 3, 2014 at 9:41 pm
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    So this probably means that it’ll remain known as Concordia.
    I was kinda hoping it would go back to being known as Concord Dawn?

  • July 3, 2014 at 9:58 pm
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    Oustanding read echo-07 (wasnt that a codename from EP V, snowspeeders?)

    I do hope they keep the mystical and mythological element alive within the universe setting i.e Joseph Campbell)

    I agree with you about the size of this project, and the need for creative writers behind it.

    I just hope that theres not a case of ‘too many cooks spoil(ing) the broth, so to speak.

    Great site, been following it for a long time. Keep up the great work 🙂

  • July 3, 2014 at 10:10 pm
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    I’m just glad that this style of movie making has been somewhat proven to work. Most importantly by Disney and Marvel themselves.

    I’d like to say that 10 years ago this should have been happening but it seems almost like the perfect storm for Star Wars.

    I just feel so bad for all those fans who are to old to see it through or never lived to see this series rise again!

    I think we are in for some great times!

    • July 3, 2014 at 11:44 pm
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      Damn, man. That’s morbid! I think I might have been born at the exact right time to see this through. I was born in 73 so I got to see first movie, in theater, at a very young age. I saw the PT when I was still young enough to recover from the PTSD and now I’ll be taking my kids to see the ST. AND with any luck, I’ll take my grandchildren to see EP XVI.

      • July 4, 2014 at 12:29 am
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        Sometimes I think of all those people who died after 2005 who did not live to see the new era of Star Wars.

        May the Force be with you.

  • July 3, 2014 at 10:23 pm
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    Some of the old fans are still around… they all not gone yet… the one thing that does make me happy is that they took their time with the script… Lucas spent 2 weeks writing The Phantom Menace, and the next 2 were about the same… thats why the story was too slow and boring at times… sounds like this new one will spark the spirit of what the true Star Wars really is with a much better story, etc……

    • July 3, 2014 at 11:07 pm
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      Yet again, the OT diehards can’t decide if the Phantom Menace had too much action or, as you claim, it was “too slow.” make up your mind guys.

      • July 4, 2014 at 12:31 am
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        We don’t like ’em. Man, that was easy.

      • July 4, 2014 at 12:31 am
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        Umm having a lot of action has no effect on the pacing of the script. Phantom menace did indeed have an overload of action and a slow pace to the story.

  • July 3, 2014 at 10:34 pm
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    these article are pointless without weighing both the pros and cons of each topic-

  • July 3, 2014 at 11:29 pm
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    I wouldn’t put too much stock in the “40 years” comment. It comes out of a financial report and is likely to be just a ballpark number used to estimate return on investment, depreciation of assets, and other financial calculations. It probably doesn’t have much bearing on the creative side of the business.

  • July 4, 2014 at 12:33 am
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    Yet another great article with lots to ponder, Echo-07! I definitely look forward to your next one on the women of VII! 😀

    • July 4, 2014 at 12:49 am
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      “The Women of VII” sounds a bit too much like the title for a bikini calendar… cue the arrival of Sexism Police.

      • July 4, 2014 at 4:17 am
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        FBI. *flashes badge* We’re taking over jurisdiction here. Now, where are those bodies? This is a matter of national security! B-D

  • July 4, 2014 at 1:03 am
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    Echo, I really enjoyed this one. Well done indeed, compadre! I agree very much about where the X-Men films went wrong, and it seems like the “brain trust” approach is very promising as far as a way to keep some continuity going between the various new SW films. (Now as long as their actual ideas are good, we oughtta be in business.) ;^)

  • July 4, 2014 at 1:18 am
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    You should totally see XMen: Days of future past! That, and first class. They’re the best of the bunch and rejuvenated that tired, bland franchise.

  • July 4, 2014 at 2:09 am
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    Too bad there was no story group policing George Lucas’s attempts at the prequels. He wrote them all bad couldn’t keep the continuity together!

    • July 4, 2014 at 2:33 am
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      Man, it often seemed like he went out of his way to screw up continuity. Basic stuff like Yoda being Obi Wan’s mentor, the repeated implications in ANH and ESB that Anakin had rushed off and quit his training early, and Owen and Anakin having had enough of a relationship to have had a falling out… all tossed to the wind.

      I hope that the new approach will at least keep some basic continuity from now on.

  • July 4, 2014 at 6:25 am
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    If the continuity was lost in the prequels how do you think they will address it in the sequels. In other words how is continuity reestablished when it was lost. Is th original trilogy correct or the goofed up prequels super ceding the ot. ……just a thought while I am sitting slightly intoxicated

  • July 4, 2014 at 6:30 am
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    Btw it’s 11:20pm where I live I’m not a 6am drunk

  • July 4, 2014 at 1:13 pm
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    @Dekka129 and lets not forget Padme dying. The prequel should have started with Anakin as a teenager. Lets get to like him in episode one before we ball our eyes out in episode 3 as he turns.

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