Tuesday 30 October 2012

George Lucas sells STAR WARS to Disney

George Lucas has sold Lucasfilm and its properties, including Star Wars, to the Walt Disney Corporation for a whopping $4 billion. Lucas has issued a statement saying he belives it is time to sell the franchise to a new generation of young film-makers.

So long and thanks for all the Sith.

 "For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next,” said George Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lucasfilm. “It's now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of filmmakers. I've always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime. I'm confident that with Lucasfilm under the leadership of Kathleen Kennedy, and having a new home within the Disney organization, Star Wars will certainly live on and flourish for many generations to come. Disney's reach and experience give Lucasfilm the opportunity to blaze new trails in film, television, interactive media, theme parks, live entertainment, and consumer products."


What effect this will have on The Clone Wars TV series and the long-in-limbo live-action TV show is unknown. However, so-far unsubstantiated Twitter chatter is that Disney is moving immediately into the planning process on a seventh Star Wars film, possibly for release in 2015.

On the plus side, George Lucas no longer gets to write Star Wars material. On the downside, it looks like the carefully-constructed Star Wars Expanded Universe could get chucked out the window in favour of a new series of films. Potentially controversial.

UPDATE: Disney confirm that Star Wars Episode VII is in active development for a 2015 release. 
Oddly, there's been no mention of what this means for the Indiana Jones franchise yet.

7 comments:

Neth said...

Well, the Disney press-release mentions that Star Wars 7 production will begin immediately with a targeted 2015 release.

http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-news/press-releases/2012/10/disney-acquire-lucasfilm-ltd

Presumably, this is the last of the original planned 3 trilogies. Where a clone of Emporer Palpatine returns, Luke falls to the Dark Side and Leia brings him back.

I wouldn't be surprised if it starts brings in some of the better (for cinematic purposes) stories of the expanded universe - Jedi Academy and Thrawn. Though the X-Wing stuff would be cool too. There's lots of potential.

I'm actually pretty excited about the prospect of post-Lucas Star Wars. There's certainly lots of room to screw it up, but frankly, I doubt they'll screw up any worse than Lucas already has. I think (or at least hope) that they will improve things.

brandon smith said...

FUCK YOU DISNEY!!!

That's all I have to say. I mean, like they NEEDED more money. *sigh* I hope SW7 bombs. HARD.

Stonewielder said...

My first hope is a blu ray release of the ORIGINAL version of episodes IV-VI (i.e. Han shoots first).

Rohrerbot said...

Ugh....Disney! They butcher everything into dreary stupidity.

Alex said...

Disney have done great things with Marvel since they bought them, no doubt they'll do the same with LucasFilm. Let's face it, they can't do worse than 20 Century Fox/LucasArts.

Anonymous said...

"Disney have done great things with Marvel since they bought them,..."

Like black captain murika and gay mutants?

On the contrary, I'd say that the marvel universe has become a mess under disney.

Some good stuff is still there,
but buried under 10x as much trash.

MrSquiggles said...

'On the downside, it looks like the carefully-constructed Star Wars Expanded Universe could get chucked out the window in favour of a new series of films. Potentially controversial.' - Wertzone 2021

...prophetic words indeed!
- Aug, 2021

(Who could have predicted Leia Poppins and lightspeed ramming?)