Not only skin color, but gender and age are also entrenched barriers that exist in Hollywood. Someone once described the ownership of the Oscars as a reflection of the aesthetics of a group of aging straight white men. The flatness of their aesthetics and values seeps into the awards process and permeates the entire industry.
No matter what the final Oscar results may be, Hollywood's structure will not fundamentally change in the short term.
After briefly paying some attention to these matters, Duke turned his focus back to the preparations for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
IMAX Corporation, following Duke's specific requests, modified two IMAX cameras. After the two cameras were delivered to the production crew, Duke named one "Death Star" and the other "Millennium Falcon."
Of course, this was mainly for publicity purposes. Even for a film series as influential as Star Wars, promotional and marketing work could not afford to slack off in the slightest.
When April arrived, Warner Bros., Lucasfilm, and UNICEF jointly organized a charity event titled "The Force for Change," raising over $40 million in donations and creating a huge sensation across North America and around the world.
That was not all. As the distributor, Warner Bros. deliberately announced that Star Wars: The Force Awakens would premiere in Italy three weeks later than its global release. Secretly, they encouraged Duke's Italian fan organizations to start protest movements. These fans not only held sit-ins in front of Warner Bros. Italy's office but also gathered more than fifty thousand signatures, submitting them to Lucasfilm to demand that The Force Awakens be released in Italy simultaneously with North America.
Soon after, Lucasfilm and Warner Bros. held a press conference announcing an adjustment to the Italian release schedule for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The film's premiere date was moved to December 16, 2014, making Italy the first country in the world to see its release.
The news brought great joy to Italian fans and drew massive public attention worldwide.
At the same time, financial institutions on Wall Street, along with Warner Bros., made profit forecasts regarding the potential revenue Star Wars: The Force Awakens could generate — the results were extremely optimistic.
To put it another way, the question was how much income Lucasfilm — or rather Duke himself — along with Warner Bros. and other partners could earn under the momentum of The Force Awakens.
Duke once said that obtaining the Star Wars franchise was one of the most wonderful moments of his life, and that statement was by no means an exaggeration.
A few years earlier, Lucasfilm's founder George Lucas had confided to Duke that he planned to retire and sell the company — including the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises.
Before this, Lucasfilm had maintained a long-term partnership with Duke through Industrial Light & Magic. The two parties immediately hit it off, and soon after, Duke purchased Lucasfilm — which owned Star Wars — for over four billion dollars in cash. This acquisition also granted him control over the company's live-action film production — including Star Wars and Indiana Jones — as well as merchandise, video games, animation, visual effects, and post-production sound.
Even though Star Wars came as part of the "dowry," at that time the acquisition was still no small expense. At least on paper, it was a massive sum of money.
In reality, according to the latest forecasts, Star Wars: The Force Awakens alone could generate over nine billion dollars in revenue for Duke's Lucasfilm and its partners — including box office, television and internet broadcasting rights, merchandise, toy sales, and more.
In Wall Street's projections, as long as Duke maintained the same level of quality in The Force Awakens as his other films, Lucasfilm would earn an astronomical amount of revenue. In less than three years, Duke could recover the more than four billion dollars he invested in the acquisition of Lucasfilm, and possibly even turn a profit.
More precisely, Duke himself — as a super "IP" — combined with the Star Wars super "IP," would create an unprecedented level of commercial value.
Previously, 20th Century Fox was the original distributor of the first six Star Wars films and still retained the distribution rights for the first two films of the original Star Wars trilogy, including the permanent distribution rights for the 1977 Star Wars film. Fox also held theatrical and home video distribution rights for Episodes I–III, V, and VI until May 2020.
Meanwhile, Lucasfilm retained the television and digital distribution rights for Star Wars, as well as the theatrical rights to all films except the first one.
Starting from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, all subsequent productions would be jointly branded by Warner Bros. and Lucasfilm — somewhat akin to the joint branding model used by Warner Bros. and Pixar Studios. From then on, the new Star Wars series would no longer have any connection with 20th Century Fox.
This meant that all copyright and profit rights from the new Star Wars series would belong solely to Lucasfilm and the distributor Warner Bros., with Duke being the biggest beneficiary.
Although Star Wars: The Force Awakens had not yet begun filming, Duke had been steadily building anticipation ever since acquiring Lucasfilm. The pull of Star Wars VII was already clearly visible. According to Lucasfilm's statistics, in 2012 and 2013, merchandise sales related to the Star Wars IP brought in roughly $2.2 billion and more than $2.4 billion in revenue respectively, making it one of the most profitable merchandise franchises in Hollywood.
Wall Street analysts predicted that in the first year after the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, merchandise sales would reach between $3 billion and $5 billion, and within five years, that number would grow to between $11 billion and $20 billion.
Aside from merchandise, the Star Wars toys themselves were also a major source of revenue for Lucasfilm.
In mid-April, Lucasfilm held the Star Wars Toy Launch Event, introducing 100 new Star Wars toys, which instantly became a cultural phenomenon.
By the end of the year, industry experts estimated that retail toy sales for the Star Wars series would reach two billion dollars.
At the beginning of the year, Lucasfilm announced the termination of its Star Wars comic license with Dark Horse Comics. The comic rights would henceforth belong to Duke's other holding company, Marvel Comics.
In late April, Marvel Comics reissued the Star Wars comic series, and within just one week, nearly one million single issues were sold — twenty-five times the sales volume of Dark Horse's last Star Wars comic seven months earlier.
Even before Star Wars: The Force Awakens began filming, Duke and Lucasfilm had already made a huge profit.
As the preparation work gradually approached its final stages, although the production crew implemented extremely strict confidentiality measures — so strict that most of the crew members, aside from the core staff, had never seen the complete script — Duke never relaxed when it came to the film's publicity and promotion.
"Los Angeles Times reports that Duke Rosenberg, the renowned director of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, recently received a special invitation to attend a state banquet held at the White House this Tuesday evening. The invitation came directly from U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama."
"The banquet serves two purposes: one, to welcome visiting French President François Hollande; and two, to host Democratic Party donors from across the country in preparation for the upcoming midterm elections. The total number of invited guests reached 350. Because of the large number of attendees, the banquet will be held on the South Lawn of the White House instead of the usual White House Banquet Hall…"
This was one of the many hyped-up news stories involving Duke and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Duke indeed attended the dinner, becoming one of the main focuses of the media that night.
Perhaps many people found it hard to understand why Americans were so obsessed with a science fiction film. From the president to ordinary geeks across the nation, everyone seemed enthralled.
In a certain sense, Star Wars is a national myth created by Americans themselves.
The United States is a young immigrant nation barely more than two hundred years old, lacking a complete system of mythology, just like the United Kingdom. Britain has Tolkien, who drew upon Norse mythology to create The Lord of the Rings; but America, unfortunately, had long lacked anyone to fill that void — until the emergence of Star Wars in 1977.
Anyone who has seen Star Wars will remember those iconic yellow words at the beginning: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…" What is that? That's the most classic way to begin a story! From the very start, George Lucas conceived Star Wars as a mythological tale.
Now look at Star Wars' narrative structure: an ordinary person dreams of escaping his dull, mundane life to go on an adventure in the outside world; a mysterious figure appears, revealing his extraordinary origins and leading him into a new world; the protagonist realizes he is the prophesied savior, and after enduring a series of trials, he grows into a truly wise, brave, and responsible hero; finally, he saves the world and fulfills the prophecy.
Does that sound familiar? In fact, Harry Potter from Harry Potter, Neo from The Matrix, and Frodo from The Lord of the Rings all share this same archetype.
Many classic myths follow this very same story structure.
It was once studied and concluded that almost all human stories could be summarized into a few fundamental narrative templates and that idea holds true.
The Star Wars formula of "the weaker side overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds to defeat a powerful enemy" can be traced all the way back to the biblical story of David defeating the giant Goliath.
Moreover, a national myth must be simple and easy to understand and it must belong to the people. Star Wars achieved exactly that.
Within the Galactic Republic, the boundaries between good and evil, heroes and villains, are clearly defined. Even the most complex character, Darth Vader, can be summed up simply: "He was good at first, then fell to the dark side and became evil." Audiences don't need to rack their brains to follow the plot.
The story contains love, family, fear, betrayal, sorrow, failure, and triumph — many of the most fundamental human emotions — all expressed in the simplest and most direct way possible. It satisfies adults while remaining easily understandable for children.
However, merely having a classic story structure and being easy to understand is not enough to make Star Wars the national myth of America. It must also possess something truly unique.
That is why the Star Wars series also has a strong market in the East. It's just a matter of how to utilize it. Duke not only valued the traditional markets of Japan and South Korea but also had no intention of neglecting the Chinese market, which lacked a deep Star Wars cultural foundation.
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