In his seemingly never-ending quest to destroy the loves of film fans and piss on his own reputation, George Lucas has reportedly been buying the film rights to dead movie stars so he can shove them into new movies.
Mel Smith, a “pal of Lucas” told The Sun, “George has been buying up the film rights to dead actors in the hope of using computer trickery to put them all together, so you’d have ORSON WELLES and BARBARA STANWYCK alongside today’s stars.”
Now first off, The Sun is hardly a reputable source, so maybe this is just a wild rumor. (God, please let this be a wild rumor!) But as Lucas doesn’t seem to have qualms about desecrating his own work, why would he have a problem fiddling with the work of others? With a young Jeff Bridges in the new Tron Legacy, I don’t doubt the technology is in our reach, but I’d rather Hollywood just go on making awful remakes of classic films rather than resuscitating Golden Era stars as CGI puppets.
The whole thing skeeves me out honestly. I mean wasn’t it bad enough when Fred Astaire was posthumously stuck into a Dirt Devil ad? And how would the legality of this even work? Since it says film rights, it seems the studios own the image of these stars, which could just be the beginning of a whole new can of worms. Will today’s actors have to impose clauses in their contracts guaranteeing their images are not used in death to sell home appliances? How will modern-day actors compete against CGI movie icons? Why can’t George Lucas just leave us classic movie fans alone?
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