Here's the biggest Star Wars news of 2012
Saturday, November 24, 2012 at 10:37PM
Jayson Peters, of Arizona's East Valley Tribune and the Nerdvana blog, has just broken the biggest Star Wars news of 2012. No, it is not Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm. And sadly, it's not the publication of a memoir of my Star-Wars-infatuated childhood. The biggest Star Wars news of 2012--and possibly several years before and after--is that Rick McCallum is moving on. From Peters' article, Rick McCallum fades out of 'Star Wars' universe:
Many questions remain about the future of the Star Wars brand and other Lucasfilm properties under Disney’s management. We know that Kathleen Kennedy, whom George Lucas brought on to run the company earlier this year as he began talking about retirement, will serve as a producer on new films — and so, now, apparently will Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg, who are attached to Episodes VIII and/or IX as writers.
Where does this leave Rick McCallum? For those not familiar with the name, he’s the man who produced the Star Wars Special Editions and prequel trilogy, and was for a long time more visible and vocal about the projects than George Lucas himself. He collaborated with Lucas on many projects, from TV’s critically acclaimed but troubled Young Indiana Jones Chronicles to the hilarious film Radioland Murders and the recent Tuskegee Airmen historical action movie Red Tails.
The answer appears to be: Out of the picture.
On the Halloween episode of the ForceCast podcast, one day following the announcement of Disney’s acquisition of the Lucas Empire, Lucasfilm’s director of content management and fan relations, the noted collector Steve Sansweet, said McCallum is “retired from Lucasfilm.”
McCallum's ascendancy at Lucasfilm has coincided exactly with the Special Editions and the Prequels. That is to say that McCallum was behind almost every Star-Wars-related mistake George Lucas ever made. (He had nothing to do with the Holiday Special.) McCallum's retirement from Star Wars seems, from my distant vantagepoint, the most important news since the announcement of the prequels.
East Valley Tribune: Nerdvana: Rick McCallum fades out of Star Wars universe