Did Disney Buy Lucasfilm for the Wrong Reasons?

[Mat001]

Whats crazier to me is Lucas gave his baby away and isn't going to profit from it. 4 billion to charity seems noble but really doesn't make sense.

So, giving money to charity if you have a shit load of it doesn't make sense? Gee, it's not like Lucas isn't a good guy doing a good thing with his money. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and the late Steve Jobs gave away huge chunks of their fortune to charity without selling.

The star wars franchise is one franchise that will never die especially with the countless novels , cartoon and comics. There are so many stories that can be told in that universe that they don't even need to focus on luke skywalker at all.

Indeed. "Tales Of The Jedi", "Knights Of The Old Republic", The Darth Bane Trilogy, "The Ewok Adventure: Caravan Of Courage", "The Ewoks: Battle For Endor", "Droids", "Droids: The Kalbarra Adventures", "Dark Forces", the X-Wing series, "Galaxy Of Fear", "The Force Unleashed", "Shadows Of The Empire" (video game), "The Old Republic" and "Legacy". The majority didn't feature the OT characters and the ones that did, they only had a small part in them.

Pretty much, especially if simply playing with just one toy can earn you billions upon billions since even the "bad" SW's stuff seems to make a crapload of money. I'm not trying to get into a debate about the prequels and other such things and if they were good or not, but they were still extremely successful financially.

Correct. People love "Star Wars". No matter how much they may bitch about things, they still love. Bob Iger would have been a fool to not accept Lucas's offer. Like Marvel, it has an established fanbase and a guarantee of sales for the young male audience.

[Kalen O.]

Seriously. J.K. Rowling lost her billionaire status recently due to all the money she gives to charity, but she was a welfare mom who now has as much money as the Queen of England and figures she doesn't need anymore and wants to give back. Not all rich people are evil money grubbing hoarders.

(Not that anyone here said they were, specifically).

[cliffhanger]

It's not the charity thing that's strange. It's that he basically can't make star wars movies anymore and he's just giving it up.

[Vibranium]

It's not the charity thing that's strange. It's that he basically can't make star wars movies anymore and he's just giving it up.

again...the man is 70...what did you expect? to just let the franchise sit there and do nothing...except for the Clone Wars show

he knew that the people at Disney could carry his creation further

[Phil Clark]

Well, lets see... the fans are skewering him for selling and letting someone else take over the franchise... or... he could have held onto it, been in total control and directed and wrote the next three, and then the fans would skewer him for them not being good enough.

Sounds like your classic rock and a hard place, damned if you do damned if you don't situation. So why not just do exactly what he did? No reason I can see. Plus he has said he didn't want to be doing Star Wars for the rest of his life. He has other things he wants to do. Whatever they are, good for him... he deserves the chance to retire.

[Alex]

Who cares what the fans want?
They aren't making is so just star wars fans go see it, they are making it so lots of people go see it.

[Phil Clark]

Its not a matter of what the fans want, it is a matter of how the fans would react.

[thwhtGuardian]

I don't think that's much of a factor either, I mean the "fans" hate the prequels and they did pretty darn good for themselves.

[Mat001]

It's not the charity thing that's strange. It's that he basically can't make star wars movies anymore and he's just giving it up.

Lucas was in his 50's when he started work on the PT in 1994. Ten years later, he's in his 60's. He said as far back as 2003, that he didn't want to be in his 70's and making another trilogy. It takes three years to do each film. Almost all trilogies take that long, no matter who is directing or writing them. If he hadn't sold it to Disney, then he would never make another trilogy. The only reason it's even happening is because he's done this.

[Alex]

I don't think that's much of a factor either, I mean the "fans" hate the prequels and they did pretty darn good for themselves.

That's the thing, Stars Wars is pretty big, but i think it's safe to say if only the giant star wars fans went to see the new movies they would bomb pretty hard.

[thwhtGuardian]

Indeed, Starwars has a mass appeal beyond the continuity obsessed fandom seen at conventions and online.

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

It's not so much about Lucasfilm being sold to some company. It's about Disney owning everything. Do we really want to live in a world where one corporation owns everything?

The spirit of free enterprise is that innovative people--like George Lucas, like Jim Henson, like Stan Lee--create new things that we like and consume and that creates jobs and wealth. One monolithic corporation owning everything can have a deadening effect on creativity. Maybe Disney is where all good things go to die. Like some elephant graveyard of entertainment.

[Prodigy X]

It's not so much about Lucasfilm being sold to some company. It's about Disney owning everything. Do we really want to live in a world where one corporation owns everything?

The spirit of free enterprise is that innovative people--like George Lucas, like Jim Henson, like Stan Lee--create new things that we like and consume and that creates jobs and wealth. One monolithic corporation owning everything can have a deadening effect on creativity. Maybe Disney is where all good things go to die. Like some elephant graveyard of entertainment.

So Disney owns Warner Bros, Fox, Paramount, Touchstone, Universal, MGM, Sony, Relativity, Time Warner, New Line, and the numerous smaller companies that put out material each year ? Seriously, Disney doesn't own everything. Their footprint is quite limited in the "own everything" department.

[Frank]

It's not so much about Lucasfilm being sold to some company. It's about Disney owning everything. Do we really want to live in a world where one corporation owns everything?

The spirit of free enterprise is that innovative people--like George Lucas, like Jim Henson, like Stan Lee--create new things that we like and consume and that creates jobs and wealth. One monolithic corporation owning everything can have a deadening effect on creativity. Maybe Disney is where all good things go to die. Like some elephant graveyard of entertainment.

That thought has merit. Walt Disney was a visonary who had a knack to mix creativity and business, he wanted to entertain and expand, more importantly the point was to create a World that feed the imagination and for people to like the journey enough to come back for more and be enchanted even more the next time. Creativity and adventure was the name of the game. While for current Disney chief Bob Iger, all he thinks about is buy, buy an buy more stuff. He bought Jim Hansen, he bought Pixar, he bought Marvel, buys Goerge Lucas. But where is the big creative visionary at Disney, who is the guy that's what their founder was in spirit, that adventurous spirit individual? When Iger was on Charley Rose, all he talked about was market share and technology and trying to do more in other countries. He seemed to have no clue as far as creativity and imagination and how to please people other than demo charts. And i'm not surprised given most of Disney/ABC's input in the last 10 years has been mediocre and Hell the only saving grace has been Pixar and the Avengers. We could say it's great that he buys them and let them do what they are good at but it just shows a weakness on his part, that he figures he is weak at creativity hence he buys creative brands. Hey maybe someday Disney could buy an entity just like Disney but one that knows how to do their stuff, maybe they'll also let this new company do their stuff because they are good at it. And after that there would no need for Disney to exist and they'll sell the name and the characters because they're not so good at handling them.

[Phil Clark]

I don't think that's much of a factor either, I mean the "fans" hate the prequels and they did pretty darn good for themselves.

But still, that isn't what I was talking about. It has nothing to do with how the films do in the theaters (Box office money wise), it has to do with the way the fans roast Lucas over an open flame for not delivering the films that THEY think he should have. So in that respect, he is saving himself a whole lot of grief by taking himself out of the equation, for the most part.