George Lucas on the State and Future of the Film Industry

TapTechNews May 28th news, the creator of the Star Wars series, George Lucas (GeorgeLucas), established himself as a filmmaking legend in 1977 and has some of his own views on the current state of the film industry and its direction of development.

He talked about the current film industry at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Lucas, now 80 years old, said in an interview with the French media BrutFR, They (Hollywood) are just telling old movies. Let's make sequels, let's make another version of this movie. And there is almost no original thinking not only in movies but also in almost everything.

In 2012, Lucas sold his Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Company for a little over $4 billion, and Star Wars has evolved into a super IP with the launch of multiple movies, games, shows and more spin-offs. Lucas said about this: After I sold the company, they (Disney) started other projects and a lot of the original ideas were lost. But that's the way it is. You give it up, you give it up.

TapTechNews noted that Lucas also talked about his views on the use of AI in filmmaking in the interview. Due to the impact of AI on the film industry, there has been a major strike in Hollywood, and the situation has now slightly eased.

Lucas first talked about his own visual effects company, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), and the way it changed film technology.

Well, we've been using it for 25 years, it's not artificial intelligence, but we use all digital technologies because we pioneered a lot of these technologies, he said. Because in ILM, we're the only place that goes digital.

But the truth is, Lucas continued, it's inevitable. I mean, it's like saying, 'I don't believe these cars are better tools, let's stick to riding horses.' Yeah, you can say that, but that's not the way the world works.