FlipBoard
Last week, the story going around was that Star Wars producer Kathleen Kennedy had asked Disney to push the release date for Star Wars Episode VII back to 2016, to give them more time to, you know, finish writing it and stuff. Disney patted her on the head and told her she was adorable, and this week announced that the official Star Wars Episode VII release date would be December 18th, 2015. One can speculate that they probably wanted it for a summer 2015 release (all other Star Wars films have been released in May), but pushed it to Christmas as a quasi-compromise.
Now Disney Chief Bob Iger has official comment on the matter, and it’s a masterpiece of corporate dickhead newspeak.
“One of the things that was very important to us is that we give the creative team, J.J. Abrams and his writing team, the time to design, write and produce the film so that we can optimize quality, so they can create a great film,” Iger stated to Bloomberg.
“We really hoped this release date would allow us to optimize goodness, while minimizing the broadest plurality of suckage contingencies, by growing the writer’s timetable horizontally to allow them even greater disruptive whitespace ideation opportunities.”
“At one point we considered the summer of 2015, but it felt like with the changes we made in the writing team that that was going to create a bit of a rush, and we didn’t think that was optimal, for obvious reasons,” Iger stated. “So Christmas 2015 became the date. [It] happens to be the date which ‘Avatar‘ — which is the number one movie of all time — was released, so we like that. Certainly, hopefully that will bring some good luck even though that was not our film. And Christmas is a good time for a film like ‘Star Wars’ we think, which will have obvious interest for young people and old people alike.” [ThePlaylist]
Yes, you wanted to give the writer’s more time to write the movie you hope to release so you made the release date six months later. I think I’m starting to understand now. But I look forward to a three-hour TED talk on this subject, to really get into all the ins, and outs, and what-have-yous.
![[avatar]](https://profilecdn-woven.netdna-ssl.com/photo/257/profile)
Really starting to suspect this one is going to squeak by, a la Hobbit 1: just get it made, establish a beach head, do it better next time.
Oh God no, I can’t watch 3 hours of walking through Endor.
As long as Johnny Depp plays Jar-Jar with a space bird on his head, they’re fine. And Disney sounds sexxxxxy.
I am fully aware i am tempting fate here but (Deep Breath) there’s no way it can be worse than the last three right? I’m talking no matter what. Like sock puppets and “Pew pew pew” noises no matter what.
Stop tempting fate!
You’re just daring her to come down and give the movie venereal disease.
Great. Just great! …now when I tell everyone OhMyBalls jinxed the film, ruining it for everyone, they are gonna kick me in the cock.
Thanks for nothing dad.
I guess I’m optimistic and also possibly like JJ Abrams more than a lot of people here, but I would honestly be surprised if it was even close to as bad as the first 3.
It may be a mess, but Abrams is good at casting so at the very least there won’t be anyone as infuriating as the two Anakins in the prequels.
I’m totally with you and dissident on this.
So they want to emulate a successful but shallow movie with a recycled plot and flashy CGI?
Sounds about right.
What they want to emulate is the profits.
Yup, definitely has nooooothing to do with you retiring in June 2016. Nothing at all.
It has always made more sense given that summer lineup. Avengers, Batman/Superman, Fantastic Four, Jurassic Park, Terminator. That’s a few billion in ticket sales right there, and it makes no sense for Disney to have Avengers and Star Wars in the theater at the same time.
Move it up to Christmas when the only thing currently opening is the WarCraft movie. If the movie is competent there’s no reason to think it wont be the second highest grossing winter release.
Mind you this is obviously just because it’s been a complete mess of a production and nobody knows where the movie is going but I just meant even before that it always made more sense.
Agreed that Summer 2015 was already crowded. I remember Episode III lasting in theaters until September. That sort of stuff doesn’t happen much anymore. With that lineup in 2015 you’d be lucky have it last until the 4th of July.
I don’t feel like doing anything productive in 2015, so they better not move any of these tent pole movies to 2016 or I’ll flat out refuse to see them as I assume the rest of the world will do in protest.
why don’t they like cast some actors and stuff and finish some scripts and then talk about when they should release the goddamn thing?
Because that’s not how it works.
Also times out nicely for Christmas toy sales.
BINGO
If you’re wondering why movies suck these days it’s because guys that use the word “optimize” are in charge of them.
This reminds me of the time Bob Iger optimized me and about 700 of my closest friends right out of Lucasfilm. Fuck that guy.
Well… good luck with that, I guess.
Not only is there a lot coming out during the summer, but there isn’t anything coming out in the winter. MONEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYY