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 Lucas controls the force of marketing for ' Star Wars' April 9, 1999 By Michael Fleeman, The Associated Press Get ready for the Force-feeding. All the hype surrounding the "Star Wars" prequel to date - the sold-out theaters showing the trailers, the Internet chatter, the "exclusive" cover stories in the magazines - is just the beginning. Toy maker Hasbro is ready to roll out a big line of merchandise linked to "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace," from talking action figures to Jabba the Hutt dolls that drool green goo, as part of what toy industry analyst Sean McGowan estimated was a $600 million licensing deal with director George Lucas. Junk food will be taken over by the movie, with Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC involved in a promotional campaign that includes collector soft-drink cans and "Star Wars" toys in kids' meals. The combined deals have been valued in published reports at up to $2 billion. Then there's the movie itself - two hours-plus of Darth Vader as a cute little waif with working lungs, in a special effects-filled story that begins a generation before Luke Skywalker first picked up his light saber in the original 1977 "Star Wars." Hollywood studios are so worried about being menaced by the Phantom that some are digging into their bag of tricks and pulling out romances and art films. DreamWorks is pitting "The Love Letter" against "Star Wars" over Memorial Day Weekend, while Universal Pictures has scheduled "Notting Hill" to go against "Star Wars" in the second week. MGM will open the lighthearted World War II film "Tea With Mussolini" the week before "Star Wars" in limited release, and Fine Line Features is releasing Bernardo Bertolucci's "Besieged" the same weekend as "Star Wars." Theater owners, meanwhile, are preparing for a major "Star Wars" commitment, not necessarily because they want to, but because the studio is telling them to. Officials at 20th Century Fox, which is distributing "The Phantom Menace," have drafted a list of strict conditions for theaters that want in on the cash machine. These include extracting promises to play the film for eight to 12 weeks in the biggest and best rooms in the multiplexes. The "Star Wars" promotional machine is being controlled by the man himself, Lucas, who sits in an unprecedented position of power, not only because he financed the $115 million movie himself, but also because he owns the merchandising rights, the result of a deal he struck years ago. To get "Star Wars" made in 1977, Lucas turned down an extra $500,000 up front from Fox in exchange for the right to make his own merchandising deals and the rights to the soundtrack, spin-off publications and any sequels. He also received a share of the movie profits. With the movie, Lucas can also dangle a golden carrot before theater owners, merchandisers and his promotional partners: the potential to make obscene amounts of money out of what is likely to be one of the biggest films of all time. And he has two more "Star Wars" movies in the wings. "Ultimately, George Lucas is all about control," said Dale Pollock, author of "Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas," a new edition of which is timed to come out around the release of the movie. "Lucas owns everything that he does outright and controls more rights than any other filmmaker has ever been able to control." In exchange for a piece of the action, Lucas is extracting not only huge fees from promotional partners, but silence as well. Each company is bound by strict confidentiality agreements that muzzle it and allow Lucas to spin the message in carefully spaced media interviews and from his official Web site. The confidentiality agreements are so strict that the agreements themselves are confidential, as one on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission made clear. The pact with Lucas-licensed Galoob Toys - which was later bought by Hasbro - listed as no-nos any "announcements, press releases, or publicity about the existence or any terms of this agreement" without Lucas' written approval. But even Lucas' efforts at information control have been thwarted by something that barely existed when he created the first "Star Wars" movie: the Internet. Want to know what the Hasbro toys look like? Don't ask Hasbro, bound and gagged by Lucas to the point that toy retailers had to sign confidentiality agreements before they were allowed to step through the magic door at this year's American International Toy Fair in New York City. Instead, log on to one of the many unofficial "Star Wars" Web sites and you'll find Hasbro's entire 1999 summer toy catalog for "The Phantom Menace." To see the toys in person, however, requires a wait until early May, when the Lucas-approved start date arrives to move the merchandise from the locked warehouses to the store shelves. Retailers are preparing whole roomfuls of "Star Wars" displays. The movie debuts May 19.
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