Walt Disney Company to acquire Lucasfilm, plans to make a new Star Wars trilogy

The Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny, which is already the world’s largest media con­glom­er­ate (it owns ABC, ESPN, Mar­vel, Pixar, and a host of oth­er prop­er­ties) is about to get even big­ger. Dead­line Hol­ly­wood Dai­ly has the sur­pris­ing news:

Dis­ney has just con­firmed that it has agreed to acquire George Lucas’ Lucas­film Ltd., and that includes rights to the Star Wars fran­chise that will now con­tin­ue on. The com­pa­nies have tar­get­ed a 2015 release for Star Wars: Episode 7, with Episode 8 and Episode 9 to fol­low as the the long-term plan is to release a new fea­ture every two or three years. “The last Star Wars movie release was 2005’s Revenge Of The Sith – and we believe there’s sub­stan­tial pent-up demand”, Dis­ney said. The deal also includes rights to the Indi­ana Jones franchise.

Dis­ney will report­ed­ly pay $4 .05 bil­lion for Lucas­film — slight­ly more than it paid for Mar­vel a few years ago, and less than it paid for Pixar Ani­ma­tion Studios.

The sur­pris­ing deal is Dis­ney CEO Bob Iger’s third major acqui­si­tion. Iger has turned around the com­pa­ny after sev­er­al dis­ap­point­ing years under Michael Eis­ner, part­ly by buy­ing Pixar and Mar­vel. Now Dis­ney will con­trol Lucasfilm.

It’s worth not­ing that Lucas has giv­en his bless­ing, encour­age­ment, and sup­port to Dis­ney’s plans to release more Star Wars movies. This is inter­est­ing because Lucas has pre­vi­ous­ly said he did not plan to make any more Star Wars movies, and would not be hand­ing off the fran­chise to any­one else, either.

But evi­dent­ly, he has changed his mind.

“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,” the film­mak­er said in a state­ment. “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,” Lucas added. (Star Wars rides are already among the attrac­tions at Dis­ney theme parks like Dis­ney­land and Walt Dis­ney World).

This deal pre­sum­ably means that Lucas’ rela­tion­ship with Rupert Mur­doch’s News Cor­po­ra­tion is at an end. News Cor­po­ra­tion’s Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry Fox has served as dis­trib­u­tor for all six Star Wars movies to date, but Dis­ney will no doubt dis­trib­ute and mar­ket any future films going for­ward. Lucas always retained mer­chan­dis­ing rights and cre­ative con­trol over the fran­chise, so Dis­ney gains that as well.

There’s no ques­tion that Star Wars is a valu­able prop­er­ty. From Dis­ney’s per­spec­tive, there is a lot of mon­ey to be made by doing more movies. (And per­haps a live-action Star Wars tele­vi­sion show, as well). In a round­table dis­cus­sion post­ed on starwars.com, Lucas not­ed that he has said in the past he does­n’t want to do any more Star Wars films. But appar­ent­ly, he is per­fect­ly con­tent to let oth­ers make them. Kath­leen Kennedy will hence­forth be the cus­to­di­an of the Star Wars fran­chise, with Lucas serv­ing as a cre­ative consultant.

Many Star Wars fans react­ed with dis­may or incredulity.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! post­ed quigon­schuel on TheForce.Net, a pop­u­lar mes­sage board for fans of Star Wars.

“All over the UK news. OMG this is the weird­est hor­ri­blest thing ever. More to say lat­er!” wrote UK Sullustian.

Obi Wanan­don­ly struck a more opti­mistic tone.

“I agree, GL [George Lucas] had to hand it off to some­one even­tu­al­ly, and they [Disney/Marvel] did knock one out of the park with ‘The Avengers.’ I am opti­mistic. On whether or not it will be a con­tin­u­a­tion of the orig­i­nal sto­ry­line, I’d think they would do a brand new thing (no Luke, Han, etc.) Then again, it might not even actu­al­ly be “Episode VII”. It’s not like they have the script writ­ten already (I’m assum­ing) so it could con­ceiv­ably be a stand­alone sto­ry arc in the SW [Star Wars] uni­verse. I think it would be awe­some if they did a tril­o­gy in the Old Repub­lic time­line, it would be fresh and new.”

“Now, I don’t like this. I mean, I real­ly, real­ly, real­ly don’t like this. But please: Tell me how Dis­ney can screw up the EU [Expand­ed Uni­verse] con­ti­nu­ity any worse than what George Lucas him­self is doing with Clone Wars these days?” asked Hogne.

JediTheSky­is­Blue added, “I have a bad feel­ing about this as well. I just don’t see how they can make a Ep [Episode] 7 with­out Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewie. But I don’t want them to recast. And I also don’t want every few years there to be a new Star Wars. Until Star Wars is noth­ing but oh no they mak­ing anoth­er one of those type of movies.”

“I was so shocked by this my hands lit­er­al­ly went numb for a sec­ond,” JediFireFly5 wrote. “Is GL [George Lucas] try­ing to kill us? I am thrilled and dis­mayed. Like if some­one dear died and you accept­ed it and moved on then they are laive but of course not the same per­son anymore…”

The deal must sur­vive reg­u­la­to­ry scruti­ny, but giv­en Dis­ney’s influ­ence in the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, get­ting the feds to sign off is prob­a­bly just a formality.