In a Variety article today, George Lucas threw us the shocker of all shockers: That Lucasfilm Ltd is getting out of the movie business. Sort of.

Basically, he’s saying that studios that spend $200 million on huge, "tent-pole" franchises are barking up the wrong tree. For the same amount of money, one could make "50-60 two hour movies" that are downloadable and pay-per-view. Sure, his filmmaking abilities may have shown their limitations with the last three in the Star Wars franchise, but the guy has obviously been on the cutting edge of technology and has the pulse of the moviegoing public more or less figured out from a business standpoint. This is the guy who practically defined the tent-pole franchise film.

This is the sort of thinking that has kept my enthusiasm for starting a new project at bay for the last year. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, a lot of speculating, and a lot of dreaming about how we can possibly make money from our next film. The Artists’ Essentials series and, to a smaller extent, the Weekend Warlords documentary were actually financially successful for us, and in both cases there’s one reason for that: we had a clearly defined audience in both cases, and we catered to that audience. That means that, going into the project, we knew, without a doubt, that we would be able to sell it. Of course, we had no idea how much we would make, but we knew how to sell it and who would buy it. 

I’m not ready to start another project until we can do this again. But there’s another piece to the puzzle. It’s easy to find a buyer for a set of instructional videos. And it’s easy to sell a documentary to the people you made the documentary about. I do that sort of stuff all the time with my wedding videos. But when talking about narrative film, it became obvious to me pretty quickly that two additional things would need to be considered alongside the audience: medium and venue.

It is validating to see that Lucas is coming to some of the same conclusions that I’ve been considering. In analyzing my own media consumption habits and those of my friends around me, as well as the trends in the technological world and what’s hitting the news, it seems like Americans are going crazy over short, satisfying, bite-sized bits of entertainment that they can pill-pop throughout their day. I know I am.

Consider this: What is the hottest trend in DVD sales right now? Television shows, old and new. My wife and I don’t get to devote a lot of time to leisure nowadays, but we love throwing in an episode of The Simpsons before dinner. There’s much less committment there than sitting down to a 2-hour opus, although it’s still not as satisfying or edifying. I think shows like Lost and 24 are popular because they satisfy both desires — the  desire for a rich, complex story and the desire for short bursts of it. Add the anticipation in between episodes — the internet culture of analysis, speculation and discussion on the plot and characters — and you’re seeing a picture of what Lucas is talking about.

Technology is only making this easier and more appealing. The iPod does video now. Not only that, but it’s also putting the power of filmmaking into the hands of more people. We’re already seeing a deluge of quantity, and sometimes the quality of the micro-budget productions are better than the big boys’ overblown extravaganza. As an audience, I think we’ll naturally be more inclined to wade through this stuff and take risks if the prices are low and the time committments are small. Do me a favor and check out Red vs. Blue if you want to see what I’m talking about. The current system, in which a relatively small group of people make boatloads of money putting out relatively little product, is starting to look like an old bear. Wouldn’t it be better for lots of people to make a comfortable living producing art that speaks to our needs? I don’t want to sound overly excited, but the time is now.

Does this mean the death of cinema? I’m not prepared to make that claim. But it may mean the transformation of the cinema experience into something more immersive. James Cameron and a host of other directors are moving into the 3-D realm that Robert Rodriguez has been experimenting with lately. You can’t get 3D, surround-sound (and maybe a few more surprises) off your iPod or computer (yet). But it will take more than good movies to plant butts into theater seats — we’ll have to radically transform the moviegoing experience to pull people away from their comfortable living rooms, which are turning more and more into theaters each year.

None of this stuff is new or original to me. It’s an amalgamation of the stuff I’ve been reading and observing over the last couple years. But if it strikes a chord with a fellow filmmaker, I’d love to hear your comments below…