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View Full Version : There is a phantom menace inside Lucasfilm!


dh1989
10-15-2002, 10:49 PM
Here is a very interesting artice from Yahoo! News about an ex-Lucasfilm employee who leaked some stuff from AOTC long before the film's May release date. I posted it below....

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Attack of the Inside Job?
Mon Oct 14, 8:15 PM ET
By Joal Ryan

The Empire has struck back, all right.

Nearly seven months after movie scoopster Harry Knowles posted an early-bird review of Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones on his Website, a former Lucasfilm employee has been arrested on suspicion of stealing Episode II images, storyboards and video files, and, according to one published report, questioned about supplying the Aintitcool.com critic with his early-bird review copy.


Shea O'Brien Foley, 30, was taken into custody October 8, in Burbank, California, where he works at NBC in the facilities department, authorities said.


Foley posted $200,000 bail and was apparently released Monday from Los Angeles County Jail, Marin County Deputy District Attorney Paul Haakenson said.


Haakenson declined comment on the case, now sealed by court order, noting only that Knowles himself is not a target of the criminal investigation.


Foley is expected to be arraigned on nine counts of grand theft and four counts of unlawful computer access at an as-yet unspecified date in Marin County, the Northern California base of operations for George Lucas' dream factories, including Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic.


According to the Marin Independent Journal, Foley became the subject of an in-house investigation at Lucasfilm, where he worked as a production assistant, in mid-March after Knowles posted his Episode II review.


"I saw [Episode II] hours ago," Knowles wrote. "The 'how' of that will be a thing of mystery buried in a passed piece of paper from my book signing with a hotel, a room number and a time listed upon it. You don't want to know about that room or the person[s] in that room, you want to know about Episode Two."


But no-leak-tolerance Lucasfilm did want to know how Knowles got his paws on its film, at the time, still two months away from its May 16 release. The company deduced the footage must have come from an in-house source, the Independent Journal says. Foley came under scrutiny because of suspicious postings made under the screen name "Shay" on Star Wars chat rooms, the paper says.
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APzombie
10-16-2002, 06:27 PM
Wow, Lucas is really serious about the security of suprise in his films, i think that shows alot of dedication in his work. He wants the fans to be totaly suprised when they first see the film...

Remember when The Phantom Menace trailer was going to go into theaters? Lucas personaly asked every theater NOT to show it early. A canadian theater showed it one day early and Lucas took away all their rights to showing Lucasfilms, like TPM, AOTC and the upcoming INDY 4....

dh1989
10-16-2002, 09:54 PM
Here is what Harry Knowles has to say about all this business....

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Hey folks, Harry here... Ya gotta love the way the press works. On the front page of AICN for the past two weeks I've had the location and phone number of where I would be should anyone needed to reach me while I was in SPAIN. Of course, none of these finally atuned news reporters actually bothered to click on the story HARRY IN SITGES for a clue how to get a hold of me about this recent Lucasfilm Arrest story.
Now at last perhaps some of you folks will realize I was telling you the truth when I told y'all that LucasFilm had no clue I had seen the film that weekend, now you know that a very serious investigation began afterwards. I've heard tabs on this investigation from sources in and around LucasFilm for the past... well ever since March 17th, 2002 when my review went up. Now this guy that they arrested, Shea O'Brien Foley, is somebody that was apparently caught in the investigation as having a great deal of materials ranging it seems from Storyboards to Audio to clips to score... all sorts of stuff. Apparently though, he did not have the film. Shea O'Brien Foley is someone I've never met, heard from or been contacted by. In some articles they talk about him having frequented Star Wars Chatrooms under the alias of 'Shay'. Well, I know this may shock you folks, but I've never been to a Star Wars chatroom, though at times, AICN's own chatroom seems to resemble one. AICN's own chatroom is the only room I ever visit online.
The person(s) that showed up at my booksigning on March 11th, 2002 and that showed me the film in that infamous hotel room on March 16th in Austin have not been caught. They told me that they had covered their tracks perfectly and when I asked what was to become of the tape they showed me, they said it would be returned to "the archive" whatever the hell that means. As for this Shea O'Brien Foley - if you want to know who he was a source for, if he was a source for anyone... Look at the sites that ran storyboards, that provided early links to the score and had astounding behind the scenes early photos from Episode 2. If you search our archive... We didn't have one of those things. Not one.
This doesn't mean Shea O'Brien Foley is innocent of the charges LucasFilm has brought against him, only that he is most certainly innocent of showing me anything.
I knew the second that I posted my review last March that a major investigation was going to commence in regards to how I saw the film. And I'm sure LucasFilm will continue their investigation as soon as they see this. The biggest difference between this guy and most of the behind-the-scenes sources (spies, whatnots) is that most of our spies show us things that they've borrowed or have permission to show us. This guy was allegedly stealing a great deal of material from LucasFilm to the tune of around $450,000 according to the articles. I am extremely confident that the source(s) that came to Austin all those months ago will never be caught. They were extremely smart, cautious and knew exactly what they were doing. As always, I will protect their identities til my dying breath. And that's AICN's side of the story.
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