John and Craig discuss the big movie news of the week: Disney buying Lucasfilm, and with it, the rights to Star Wars.
Everyone’s already talked about what it means for fans and stock prices, but what does it mean for screenwriters? It could lead to new jobs creating extensions to the Star Wars universe — both in film and television — but does the reliance on giant brands make it harder to create the next culturally-defining franchise?
On the topic of new old things, John has his first-ever videogame coming out tomorrow on Xbox: Karateka, a reinvention of Jordan Mechner’s seminal fighting game from the 1980s. He talks about the challenges of making an indie game and what his role was as an executive producer.
From there, we answer listener questions. Is it okay to love your own writing? How young is too young to write a screenplay? What can be done about a 212 page script? And what does “going out wide” with a spec script really mean?
All this and more in episode 62 of Scriptnotes.
Special thanks to everyone who’s rated us and left comments in iTunes. They help new users find us, so if you haven’t left one recently, drop us a line.
LINKS:
* [Disney buys Star Wars](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118061434)
* The [original Karateka](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karateka_(video_game))
* [Karateka](http://karateka.com) launches Nov. 7 on Xbox
* [Letterpress](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/letterpress-word-game/id526619424?mt=8) game for iOS
* [Screenshot](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/johnvcraig.jpg) of John beating Craig in Letterpress
* [Red Cross](https://www.redcross.org/donate/index.jsp?donateStep=2&itemId=prod10002&utm_source=Disney_DayofGiving&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=Sandy) donations to Hurricane Sandy relief
* [Scriptnotes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/scriptnotes-podcast/id462495496) on iTunes
* INTRO: [Card Sharks theme song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDugzjCJP6Y)
* OUTRO: [Star Wars Call Me Maybe](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBM7i84BThE)
You can download the episode here: [AAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_62.m4a).
**UPDATE** 11-9-12: The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/scriptnotes-ep-62-were-all-disney-princesses-now-transcript).