Great to see this back! And with a bang, too!
TheInfiniteApe: Thanks! Despite the relative brevity of the post, there's a good deal to discuss...
The "New Hollywood" generation pooling their resources together into a megacorp is a logical conclusion of the mega-success of
Star Wars, IOTL
and ITTL. And Lucasfilm - though largely a solo effort by the Lucases, with their other New Hollywood brethren serving largely as outside consultants - did very well for itself IOTL, though obviously it was marred by the emerging of the infamous
Jorge hubris ("I can do everything
all by myself, with no input from anyone else"). Their decision to purchase United Artists - which, ironically, was driven into ruin by
another notorious case of New Hollywood hubris,
Heaven's Gate - is a very sound one, and poetically appropriate, given its origins as an independent studio founded by three of the biggest luminaries of their day (D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and some fourth guy who nobody remembers).
Which means that George and Marcia aren't doing everything by themselves. In fact, in this situation, I would imagine that Skywalker Ranch would be
much smaller and less intensive in its construction. Perhaps it would be constructed
solely as a company retreat and refuge as opposed to the birthing place for big ideas that was intended IOTL. I also notice that everybody
else is pitching in on both the creative and the business angles. This allows George and Marcia more time for their home lives, including doting on their adoptive child(ren). All evidence points to Marcia (despite her own very successful and well-regarded career in film editing) wanting to settle down and raise a family once their circumstances were financially stable, so as long as George makes time for that, they should be doing just fine.
Great overview of the various properties that UA has at its disposal. I'll touch on them briefly, and their status at the time of the sale (assuming it happened in 1981, as IOTL):
- The Beatles: The Sgt. Pepper musical film bombed in 1978, and of course Lennon was assassinated in 1980. Hard to exploit this property further. TheInfiniteApe: Not necessarily. Lennon hasn't been killed yet...
- The Pink Panther: Sellers died in 1980, and every attempt to revive the franchise in live-action form since has met with critical or audience scorn. TIA: Indeed. I'm not sure what I'll do with this series, but I would like to do it some justice TTL.
- Rocky: The two Rocky films with the greatest impact on popular culture - III and IV, both of which helped to define the 1980s - have yet to be released. Rocky III came out in 1982, and was filmed in the summer of 1981. Who knows what might change here? No "Eye of the Tiger"? No Hulk Hogan? No Mr. T? TIA: Wait and see...
- James Bond: For Your Eyes Only, generally regarded as the last decent outing for 007 as played by Roger Moore, was released in 1981. The famed "Battle of the Bonds" is on the way, with Kevin McClory finally able to produce his version of the Thunderball film in 1983, starring (of course) Sean Connery as 007, and going head-to-head with the official EON release, Octopussy. There's a lot of room for changing the finer details of both films' development ITTL, especially since Solo United has at their disposal a director who has always wanted to helm a Bond picture... TIA: Spielberg has already directed an insanely successful Bond film TTL, remember. Moonraker was his. He may or may not be done with the franchise, but the eighties are pretty busy for SS.
I'll assume that the Coppola quote is heavily abridged. He is
incapable of speaking without rambling
TIA: I know, right? It was easy to use him for exposition because of this fact. I was having a hard time with how to explain SU, until I realized I had the perfect talker sitting right there as a member of the Holy Trinity of SU.
Harrison Ford is Batman! With a script written by (then-unknown) Frank Miller! This should prove an
intriguing plot development. Especially considering that Ford is, by the early 1980s, approaching 40, and nobody plays world-weary and worn-out better than he does, we'll probably be seeing an older Batman (even if we didn't know that's what Miller likes to write). That also allows them to avoid showing Robin, as in the comics continuity there is still only one Robin (Dick Grayson) at this point, with Robin #2 (Jason Todd) not having been introduced until 1983 (with Grayson becoming Nightwing the following year). And who will be cast as the seemingly-inevitable main villain, the Joker?
TIA: This is one that gave me a lot of trouble. WB and CBS ITTL are still pressuring the producers for a "Batman in Space" story, but everyone else is going to want an origin story. By splitting the story between Batman's origin (with a younger actor for at least a quarter of the film) and a current story which calls back to the origin story a la The Godfather Pt. II, I got the opportunity to have Coppola do a good Batman origin film, meets a violent Godfather-esque mafia film, meets a Moonraker-esque science-fiction action flick (the "In Space" portion will be another quarter of the film, tops).
Frank Miller's "flashback origin story" half of the movie is similar to both Batman Begins and Batman: Year One with shades of the 1989 Batman film.
The modern day half of the film is similar to Batman Begins and actually OTL's Ironman, in the sense that Wayne Enterprises is something of a high tech defense contractor working on something eerily prophetic of the Strategic Defense Initiative. They lose control of these incredibly dangerous satellites A powerful crime family is initially blamed on the hijacking, but it turns out that the League of Assassins used the criminal empire to gain access. Batman must travel into LEO to foil the plot in the film's climax.
I won't give too much away but Coppola uses many of the people who worked on The Godfather series to help make his Batman. The score is composed, arranged, and conducted by Carmine Coppola based off of themes written for the film by Nino Rota before his death. The soundtrack is almost entirely by Tom Waits. Mario Puzo served as a consultant on the story and script, specifically the parts involving organized crime. All in all, this is an incredibly Godfather-esque Batman, with the exception of the science fiction climax.
And of course, this means no One From The Heart...
The best part of Harrison Ford as Batman is, if he ever confronts the Waynes' murderer, he can shout "You killed my parents!" at them, instead of "You killed my wife!"
TIA: Haha! Well now that HAS to happen...
Coppola directing, with McQuarrie
and Giger working on visuals? Wow, this is going to be a
very visually interesting movie...
TIA: Imagining it is delightful.
TMP was still a financial success for Paramount, despite a negative overall reception, because hardcore Trekkies went to see it dozens, if not hundreds, of times during its theatrical release. It was the #5 film of 1979 (and by far the highest-grossing for Paramount), and could easily have ranked as high as #2, with only a few million more dollars. That said, executives at Paramount
were clever enough to intuit that successive films would have diminishing returns, and saw
Star Trek II as their last hurrah. Still, as long as they could limit costs by kicking Roddenberry upstairs, I doubt they'd be willing to pass on the potential for a very substantial profit onto another studio.
Excellent update, TheInfiniteApe! More fascinating webs you're spinning here. I look forward to what you'll come up with next.
I am so glad you approve!