Chapter 768: Lucasfilm

The pace of the shoot was blistering. The experts sent by NASA played a significant role; aside from assisting in pre-production, the astronaut stationed on set frequently pointed out details that contradicted reality. His feedback was fair and grounded, but Duke adopted very little of it.

In truth, many details during the shoot were scientifically inaccurate. They simply had to give way to the emotional experience Duke, as the director, wanted to craft for the audience.

For instance, the astronauts' breath would fog up their helmet visors on camera. In reality, modern spacesuits were specifically designed to prevent this, using specialized technology to keep the glass crystal clear. Duke had shot takes with both effects, and when weighing his options, deliberately chose the scientifically inaccurate one.

The fog visualized the characters' breathing. The visible presence of the visor also induced a distinct sense of claustrophobia. Placing heavy condensation directly over the subjective point-of-view shots served to heighten the utter isolation and helplessness of drifting through space.

How to tell a compelling story through film, how to strike a balance between realism and dramatic tension, and how to make technology serve the narrative—these were the most vital questions a director had to consider.

Every director had their own style and philosophy, and Duke was no exception. Maximizing the film's entertainment value and keeping the audience engaged were absolute necessities naturally dictated by the sheer scale of the project's budget.

They were shooting the scene where Scarlett Johansson's character listens to a radio broadcast of a barking dog and a crying baby, shutting down all her equipment to wait for death. Sofia Coppola happened to be visiting the set that day and ended up discussing the scene with Duke.

"Seeing Scar sobbing silently in there..."

Sofia Coppola stood beside Duke, watching Scarlett touch up her makeup in a lounge chair. "I thought it was the best tragic scene I'd ever watched, but then I remembered your script, and all that feeling just vanished. If Scar's character died at the end, I really think it would hit much harder."

Duke rolled his eyes at her. "My dear, I think you're forgetting something. This is a commercial blockbuster with a production budget of two hundred million dollars!"

Sofia shrugged, entirely unconcerned.

"Audiences want to experience the triumph of overcoming the odds," Duke emphasized. "Not the futility of a desperate, dying struggle."

"Have you asked Scar for her opinion on the character?" Sofia asked suddenly.

"Of course I have," Duke said, returning to his chair to get back to work. "She thinks this ending is fantastic."

If he actually listened to Sofia Coppola and killed off the female lead after all her endless struggles, the film would bomb hard enough to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The entire investment would be wiped out.

The two endings were simply a choice between art-house sensibilities and commercial viability.

In reality, Scarlett's perspective was very close to his own. When she sat down for an exclusive interview with the Hollywood Reporter a few days earlier, the interviewer had asked her why she pivoted from indie films to the commercial blockbuster route.

Scarlett's answer had been rather intriguing. She explained that it was a natural shift; watching films was fundamentally an act of escapism. Life was already difficult enough, and audiences didn't go to the theater to suffer. Since actors were entertainers, the audience simply wanted to be entertained. But she noted that a director like Duke possessed the ability to package the innate tragedy of the human condition into a captivating survival adventure. By experiencing that adventure vicariously, the viewer underwent a sort of rebirth. They might walk out of the theater possessed by a sudden urge to do something, to actively experience the beauty of being alive. That was the hope the film ultimately conveyed. It took a heartbreaking premise and translated it into a beautiful language that made people want to fight for their lives.

Seizing the moment before Duke threw himself back into his work, Sofia walked over and stood behind his director's chair. "The female characters in your films over the past couple of years have grown increasingly prominent," she noted. "They're tougher, far more resilient. Don't tell me you've actually turned into a feminist?"

Duke just shrugged, offering no concrete answer. "Who knows."

He turned his head, only to find Sofia staring right at him, her eyes wide with unbridled curiosity. "Times are changing, and so is cinema," he relented. "I just think female characters like this feel genuinely alive."

Sofia knew Duke well enough to realize he wasn't finished. She gestured for him to continue.

Duke thought about it for a second. "We've been in this industry for a long time," he told her. "We've seen far too many manufactured fantasies—stories that unfold perfectly within the boundaries approved by a patriarchal society. But we know the real world is diverse. Everyone is born different, and their ways of surviving are all different. That's why we're seeing more and more films portraying different kinds of mythologies now. Those are the kinds of films I like. They're the ones that are truly interesting."

"Don't you think those Disney-style fairy tales are incredibly boring? Boy meets girl, boy and girl break up, boy throws everything away to get the girl back, and they live happily ever after... It's sweet and all, but I just don't find it interesting."

Sofia nodded in agreement. "It really is. I don't even think comedy can save those flawless fairy tales anymore. Life only gets interesting when things go off-script, when it fractures into unexpected paths. Take your script for Gravity. If the protagonist had a happy family waiting eagerly on Earth for her return, it wouldn't be nearly as compelling. A woman who has lost the people she loves most, someone with absolutely no reason left to live—seeing what could possibly reignite her will to survive is far more captivating."

"Exactly," Duke said, turning back to his monitor. "Those are the characters that resonate. People can see themselves in a story like that, because there are so many different ways to live in every corner of the world. They can still be funny, they can still be entertaining, and they can still have a happy ending—it's just that the happy ending is earned through visceral, messy struggles."

Off the set, the matter occupying most of Duke's attention was his team's ongoing contact with Lucasfilm.

Ever since August, the news that George Lucas would soon be retiring had been causing a massive uproar across the industry. The future of Lucasfilm had become the focal point of everyone's attention.

It was true that Lucasfilm couldn't match the scale of the traditional Big Six, but its profitability was terrifying. Furthermore, through Industrial Light & Magic, it had the power to shape the future of Hollywood's entire filmmaking industry. Forget the larger studios lacking competitive edge—every single one of the traditional Big Six wanted to absorb Lucasfilm into their own ranks.

Duke naturally wanted the same, but he was up against exceptionally powerful rivals.

Among the Big Six, Walt Disney was the most desperate to acquire Lucasfilm. Sony Columbia Pictures was being dragged down by its parent company, the Sony Group, and could essentially be counted out of the race.

The remaining studios were biding their time, waiting for the right price and opportunity to strike.

Winning over Lucasfilm's shareholders ultimately came down to the offer. In a massive acquisition involving billions of dollars, nothing mattered more than cold, hard cash.

Capital was an area where Duke had a distinct advantage. Over the past few months, through stock transfers and bank financing, he had amassed a staggering pool of liquid capital. It was more than enough to go head-to-head on price against any studio in the industry.

Furthermore, the personal stance of Lucasfilm's most critical figure, George Lucas, was another major advantage in Duke's corner. Assuming the bids were relatively close, George Lucas was guaranteed to favor transferring his shares to Duke, giving him the absolute upper hand.

Time Warner was backing Duke as well. Strained by the tight liquidity resulting from their rapid corporate expansion, Time Warner couldn't offer much in the way of hard cash, but they had symbolically joined Duke's acquisition bid and would hold a minority stake in Lucasfilm going forward.

This was excellent news for the buyout. Lucasfilm's executives were fully aware that the company was going to be sold, but given the choice, they naturally favored the massive, industry-wide platforms of the Big Six. Bringing Time Warner to the table was the perfect move on Duke's part to neutralize Walt Disney's primary advantage.

During the ongoing negotiations, Duke's team had already raised their offer to 3.8 billion dollars. That was a premium price, but if it came down to it, he was fully prepared to bump the figure to 4 billion or higher.

Duke had also made a firm promise to the Lucasfilm board: the moment the acquisition was finalized, a brand-new Star Wars franchise would be greenlit immediately. This guaranteed that Lucasfilm's financial performance would skyrocket over the next few years, ensuring that the executives would walk away with astronomical bonuses.

To Duke, spending four billion dollars to acquire Lucasfilm was essentially stealing a golden goose.

The sheer profit-generating power of Lucasfilm would hit absolutely staggering heights once the new Star Wars films began rolling out.

Duke remembered it perfectly. In his past life, long before the newest Star Wars even hit theaters, the merchandise and licensing rights had practically printed money. EA held the exclusive gaming rights; Lego churned out wildly popular Imperial Star Destroyer sets; Sony Entertainment secured exclusive rights for related games and bundle packages on the PlayStation 4; Hasbro bought the master toy license for Star Wars action figures and models...

And that was only scratching the surface. Before the first film even premiered, Lucasfilm had raked in over a billion dollars purely in licensing fees!

That didn't even account for the massive revenue from home video and streaming rights. Disney had made an absolute killing off DVD sales and digital distribution alone—the original six films experienced massive surges in popularity during the promotional campaigns for the sequels. For Disney, the cost of simply re-releasing the old movies was practically zero, meaning it was nothing but pure, unadulterated profit.

Walt Disney had been the ultimate victor in the original acquisition. In the previous world Duke had lived in, Walt Disney acquired Lucasfilm from Star Wars creator George Lucas in 2012 for a total of 4.05 billion dollars. That deal was later universally recognized as the bargain of the century; Disney made their entire investment back purely on licensing rights and merchandise alone.

But here and now, up against a competitor like Duke, Walt Disney possessed no advantage whatsoever.