George Lucas to Resurrect Dead Movie Stars? 296
According to his director friend Mel Smith, George Lucas has a plan for upcoming movies more insidious than a whole Gungan cast. Smith says Lucas is buying the rights to old movies in order to put dead actors in his films. He says, "George has been buying up the film rights to dead actors in the hope of using computer trickery to put them all together, so you'd have Orson Welles and Barbara Stanwyck alongside today's stars." Even if Smith is lying, it makes you wonder who long it will be until Hollywood starts to recycle actors as well as scripts.
Re:At least this will prove zombies don't exist (Score:5, Insightful)
Dancing with vacuum cleaners... (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember all the outrage over colorizing Casablanca in the 1980s? There were even congressional hearings that warned of the dire consequences of unmitigated technology (someone even imagined at the time dead actors being re-inserted in new movies, unthinkable at the time). Sounds crazy [youtube.com]....
Re:Curiosity (Score:4, Insightful)
Just out of curiosity, is the rage more from "reviving" dead actors, or Lucas doing so?
Pretty sure I know the answer already, but feel like asking anyway.
For me, it's "in general". George Burns is a great actor and comedian, but he's passed. The thought that we're going to pull a Weekend At Bernie's for a quick buck strikes me as deeply disrespectful. Owning their "likeness" strikes me as a bit cheesy too - I'm pretty sure the intention wasn't to let Elvis' estate start making new movies.
Sadly, it won't even come to that. What'll happen is that the new "standard movie star contract" will include some fine print giving the studios the rights to the actor's likeness at that point. The actor'll get paid for one cheap movie, and then the studio will keep them in movies for free for all eternity.
Re:At least this will prove zombies don't exist (Score:4, Insightful)
By better track record, you mean that he died before he could ruin his own films?
I don't think George is trying to resurrect dead movie stars here. I think he just needs to own their rights so he can remove them from their films and insert Hayden Christiansen in their place.
In the end it's really just about owning IP, and George Lucas is the master of owning IP. He just also happens to be the master of destroying IP too. In fact let's just call it P, because there's really no I in his biggest franchise anymore.