George Lucas has a bone to pick with Hollywood when it comes to focus groups and test screenings. The “Star Wars” creator, who walked away from the franchise in 2012 after selling Lucasfilm to Disney in a $4 billion deal, recently told A Rabbit’s Foot (via IGN) that Hollywood’s over-reliance on focus groups has created studio movies dictated entirely by fans over filmmakers.
“I don’t like focus groups,” Lucas said. “The audience doesn’t know what they want to see. If they don’t like a character, that’s interesting, and as a filmmaker I want to find out why. But when the studios hear that, they take the wrong message. They let the audience actually make the movie. Of course, now they go crazy with that. Now, it’s all about what the fans think. That isn’t how you make the movie. You make a movie by finding someone that knows how to make movies, that has a story to tell and is passionate about it.”
“You go to the movies because the stories move you emotionally,” Lucas added about what should be the guiding light for films in development. “Art is an emotional medium.”
Focus groups and test screenings have become a routine step in the studio moviemaking process. Maggie Gyllenhaal notably revealed earlier this year that test screenings for “The Bride!” took her to task over the movie’s depiction of violence and sexual violence. James Gunn test screened “Superman” and discovered that audiences opposed the moment when David Corenswet’s Man of Steel decides to save a squirrel as Metropolis is being attacked by a rampaging Kaiju monster. Gunn refused to listen.
