The Toronto Sun thinks that Seth Rogen thinks so.  Aaand, that’s really all there is to say about the matter.  According to the Sun, Rogen was in a position to find this out when George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg joined a meeting he was in:

George Lucas sits down and seriously proceeds to talk for around 25 minutes about how he thinks the world is gonna end in the year 2012, like, for real. He thinks it.

He’s going on about the tectonic plates and all the time Spielberg is, like, rolling his eyes, like, ’My nerdy friend won’t shut up, I’m sorry…

This news is dubious at best, but like the best kind of rumor, it seems hauntingly plausible.

Update: But it isn’t true! “The “I cast dead people” scenario that’s making the rounds on the web is not true, according to Lucasfilm spokesman Josh Kushins. “This rumor is completely false,” he told Wired.com in an e-mail Monday.”

Mel Smith, a British comedian who worked with George Lucas on the little known 1994 film Radioland Murders, which Lucas wrote and executive produced for, had this to say about his experience:

George doesn’t understand comedy, so the movie flopped. At least it taught me how to use CGI. George is obsessed with it and used too much in the last two Star Wars films — which I thought were ghastly.

He’s been buying up the film rights to dead movie stars in the hope of using computer trickery to put them all together in a movie, so you’d have Orson Welles and Barbara Stanwyck appear alongside today’s stars.

And remember: Lucas isn’t making three sequels.  Definitely is not.  You can breathe again.  You don’t have to spend time figuring out whether you’re excited or angry.

Not until about three years after the movies are done coming out in 3D and our boy George needs something to do again, at least.

(via Buzzfeed.)

Sorry, Selleck Waterfall Sandwich, but you may have just been bested in the highly competitive category of Tom Selleck-inspired fan art, thanks to DeviantART user Gh0stbuster, who has has imagined an alternate-universe Raiders of the Lost Ark starring Selleck. Why? Gh0stbuster’s homage is inspired by the fact that Stephen Spielberg initially cast Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones, but had to give the role to Harrison Ford instead when CBS wouldn’t let him take the part due to his Magnum, P.I. contractual obligations. (Spielberg had wanted Ford anyway, but producer George Lucas was initially hesitant.)

(Gh0stbuster via via GEEKLEETIST)

Context. (You’ll weep, and then reach for your wallet.)

(via BuzzFeed)

Add another item to the list of things that George Lucas will do to beat one last round of cash out of his “once beloved accidental masterpiece.”

In a move that we’re much more familiar coming out of big studios who wouldn’t know artistic motivation if it kicked them in the pants, Lucas will be re-releasing all six Star Wars movies to theaters in 3-D, beginning in 2012 with Episode I: The Phantom Menace.   According to The Hollywood Reporter, he was inspired by Avatar.  (Not The Last Airbender.)

20th Century Fox must be pinching themselves.

Geeks with an interest in how our culture is produced should definitely take a look at Michael Heilemann‘s long, insightful, well-sourced essay on the creative process that gave rise to Chewbacca. While George Lucas claims to have gotten the idea for Chewy when he saw his dog sitting in the passenger seat of his car, Heilemann argues convincingly that many ingredients went into the making of the character, from a ’30s pulp sci-fi illustration to an Analog magazine illustration by John Shoenherr (above left) to an acquaintance of Lucas’ amazingly named Ralph Wookie.

Heilemann’s aim, though, isn’t to play the pedantic parlor game of saying ‘X stole from Y,’ although his essay is titled “George Lucas Stole Chewbacca, But It’s Okay”; rather, it’s about how Lucas and legendary designer and illustrator Ralph McQuarrie kept pressing on and on to make Chewbacca into exactly what they wanted, borrowing from their lives, the worlds around them, and, yes, the work of others in the process.

Last week was Star Wars Celebration V, and even aside from great costume pics, and great announcements, we’re still getting exciting stuff from it. George Lucas, for example, announced his pick for the 2010 Fan Movie contest. We’ve posted it below.

Read on...

If you think one of those things is not like the other, you’re about to be sorely disappointed. This weekend Orlando, Florida is host to the Star Wars Celebration V (we guess it’s the Empire Strikes Back themed one?), and the con has already been the source of news that will be debated for a while among fans.

Some of the news was a much more expected surprise, as yesterday when George Lucas announced that both Star Wars trilogies will be coming to Blu-Ray within the next year, and showed a deleted scene from Return of the Jedi.

More info, including video, below.

Estranged member of the original group that put Star Wars: A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back together, producer Gary Kurtz has some strong but ultimately unsurprising words for The LA Times, regarding George Lucas and the creative motivations behind the later Star Wars movies.

Instead of bittersweet and poignant [Lucas] wanted a euphoric ending with everybody happy. The original idea was that they would recover [the kidnapped] Han Solo in the early part of the story and that he would then die in the middle part of the film in a raid on an Imperial base. George then decided he didn’t want any of the principals killed. By that time there were really big toy sales and that was a reason.

Well, we can’t say that we don’t prefer Han alive at the end of the trilogy, but gee, George Lucas makes bad writing decisions for the wrong reasons?

We are shocked.