Disney buys Lucasfilm for $4 billion
The Walt Disney Company released a bit of news yesterday: It struck a deal to purchase Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion. But the big surprise was the announcement that they will put out a new Star Wars movie in 2015.
George Lucas and Disney aren’t exactly strangers. At Disneyland you can travel through the galaxy with R2D2 in the Star Tours ride which Lucas helped create.
Disney CEO Bob Iger made the annoucement in a conference call yesterday. He said the acquisition is built on the foundation of that rleationship and “combines two of the strongest family entertainment brands in the world.”
Industry analyst Kevin Klowden with the Milken Institute is not surprised by the move. He says Disney paved the way for this deal when it paid billions for superheroes in its 2009 purchase of Marvel and has demonstrated that, “they are focused on acquiring talent and content.”
In the Lucasfilm deal, Disney also annnounced that it will release a new Star Wars film every couple years. Some fans are worried the franchise could beome “Disneyfied” — no one wants to see Chewbacca burst into song.
Klowden says that “even though a cetain number of peope may or may not love the prequels, they’re big business”
That business that includes Lucas’s three other production companies and the Indiana Jones Franchise. Plus the 17,000 characters that make up the Star Wars universe that Disney now controls.
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