Lucas Talks Young Indy Chronicles

From TheRaider.net

UPDATED: Lucas talks Young Indy Chronicles
06/03/07, 5:06pm EST

George Lucas was guest at the Museum of Television and Radio?s William S. Paley Festival Saturday night. The first 90 minutes of the two-hour event were devoted to The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and the efforts to bring that series to DVD with accompanying documentaries and study guides.
Helen H. who attended this 'Evening With George Lucas' event reported to TheForce.net: "Indy Jones Chronicles are currently being cleaned up, are having documentaries added to them and will be shopped as ?films for a modern day high school history class.? He?s [Lucas] hoping they?re released on DVDs very soon."

Update: IGN.com published an article on Lucas' Young Indiana Jones Chronicles DVDs containing more detailed info and bits on the process of making this DVD collection:

The DVDs will include the reedited versions of the series previously available on VHS, which took the 44 episodes of the show and turned them into 22, 90 minute, feature length stories. Lucas conceived of doing this very early on, and when the series first wrapped production, shot footage that would help link the episodes more cohesively.

Lucas mentioned how the series was shot on 16mm, which allowed more money to be spent on the production and allow for longer shooting schedules than it would have otherwise had. However, he said, "we're in the process of enhancing and cleaning up [the picture] for DVD." Having mentioned the cost constraints the The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was under, he also humorously stated, "We're spending more to clean things up then we did to shoot it."

Read the full article online at IGN.com.

Sources: Jared Barrett, Ain't It Cool News and TheForce.net.

I'm disappointed that they're going to be the re-edited versions. I wanted the original episodes with the Old Indy bookends with the new linking footage as "deleted scenes" or viewable through a branching function.

I'll still buy them.

 

at last! i have been craving this show since the early 90s when it was on air!

 

I really hope they include the Old Indy segments somehow. I really want to see those!

I wonder if I should try to sell off my tapes now...

 

I hated old Indy, and thought he was one of the reasons the series didn't have more success. If they edit him out, great.

 

This is great news. Unfortunetly, it's the same great news that they gave like 3 years ago when asked about the Young Indy Chronicles. I'm not going to get excited about this until we get a date.

 

How many episodes are there? I've only seen a few.

 

Yeah this sucks, those single episodes were very good IMO, putting them together as movies really doesn't work for me. Sadly, I think I've lost interest for this.
If they're sold individually then I'll probably get the ones that were actually feature length, like 'Mystery of the Blues', 'Scandle of 1920' etc.

 

The DVDs will include the reedited versions of the series previously available on VHS, which took the 44 episodes of the show and turned them into 22, 90 minute, feature length stories. Lucas conceived of doing this very early on, and when the series first wrapped production, shot footage that would help link the episodes more cohesively.

Well it was something that was done back when they were filmed. I'm guessing that Lucas thought if the show was not succesful on televsion and was canceled he could always re-edit them into movies and released them in another manner: video, cable, HBO, etc. If Old Indy is not going to be in the actual films then I would like the book ends and the opening credits to be part of the DVD extras.

 

Even if he did think of it early on, it's ludicrous. Those original episodes were the ones shot by great filmmakers like Bille August, Simon Wincer, and Nicolas Roeg, the ones that deservedly won all those emmys.

Lucas just can't leave well enough alone. I'll seek out those Japanese LD on Ebay.

 

Come on, this set is going to be sweet (and expensive). You can always by up the old VHS tapes for about $1 each if you don't like the DVDs, but the history content alone will be worth it.