Kabam Acquires Top LucasArts Game Makers to Help Build Hardcore Social Games

Kabam, known for developing hardcore social games such as The Godfather and Kingdoms of Camelot, has acquired a company with deep roots in the console game space.
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The Secret to Some of Lucasfilm's Magic: Nvidia's GPU Chips

Asked to create a “tornado of fire” for a Harry Potter movie a few years ago, digital artists at Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic found the techniques they were using not up to the task. Then they discovered graphics chips, and things got very interesting.

A Virtual Tour of the Town of Dirt, from the Animated Film "Rango"

How does a movie director accustomed to working with real actors on physical sets set up scenes that take place in a town that doesn’t exist? You invent a way to visit that place in person, which is exactly what Industrial Light and Magic did for director Gore Verbinski on the animated film “Rango.”

Lucasfilm's Data Center, and an Encounter With the Real Death Star (Video)

Yes, the Death Star is real. Luckily it looks nothing like the floating space station of the Star Wars movies. It also no longer runs. But you can find it inside the data center at Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic.

Meet Kevin Clark, Master Not of the Force, but of Data

He’s not a Jedi, but given the computing challenges he wrestles with every day, he might as well be. Kevin Clark talks about running the IT infrastructure for that nerve center of geekdom, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Industrial Light and Magic.

News Byte

"Star Wars": A New Dimension

The quality of 3-D technology and the number of available venues have finally reached the point where George Lucas is satisfied he can wring a few more zillion dollars out of the “Star Wars” saga. Lucasfilm announced that all six films in the series will be converted–tastefully, of course–to 3-D over an unspecified period of years, starting with the release of “Episode I: The Phantom Menace” in 2012 (the same year James Cameron will raise the “Titanic” gross with a 3-D remake).

Better Stop Holding Your Breath for a Verizon iPhone

If Verizon is in talks with Apple to become the second U.S. carrier for the iPhone, they evidently aren’t going very well. How else to explain the iPhone-slagging ad campaign for Verizon’s forthcoming Android handset, Droid?
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Special D Tab and More to Come

The Wall Street Journal has a special “D: All Things Digital” tab today, with excerpts from several of the interviews that took place onstage a few weeks ago at our fifth conference. I did a video for it, embedded below. The interviews featured are with famed filmmaker George Lucas, CBS CEO Les Moonves, Time Inc. [...]

Mash Me Up and I Shall Become More Powerful Than You Could Possibly Imagine.

If there’s one thing you can say about Lucasfilm, it’s that it’s not afraid to keep milking the “Star Wars” cash cow, er, bantha. And so, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the film–whose franchise has earned more than $22 billion since it first debuted–Lucasfilm is making 250 clips from all six “Star Wars” [...]