The Walt Disney Company Now Owns Lucasfilm with New Star Wars Episode VII in Three Years. Also My Thoughts

Yesterday The Walt Disney Company announced a deal to acquire Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion, with half in cash and half in shares of The Walt Disney Company stock. This isn’t much of a surprise seeing as in the past Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company have worked together to create Star Wars and Indiana Jones attractions for Walt Disney Parks and Resort attractions across the world. At the same time as this announcement a new Star Wars film was announced. Currently its called Star Wars Episode VII and is expected to be released in 2015.

Lucasfilm CEO George Lucas said in a statement: “For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next. 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.”

Chairman and CEO of  The Walt Disney Company Roger Iger said: “fans can expect to see more Star Wars movies more often. In 2015, we’re planning to release Star Wars Episode VII – the  first feature film under the ‘Disney-Lucasfilm’ brand. That will be followed by Episodes VIII and IX – and our long-term plan is to release a  new Star Wars feature film every two to three years.”

So expect the already milked Star Wars franchise udders to be frittered to a pulp in the next decade. I am quite surprised to see that they are really going to try to make more Star Wars films seeing as Episode I most people would agree was rubbish but II and III was much better but that was only because they were leading to the films everyone loves IV to VII. Them making Episode VII to IX means they got three films to thing off from scratch this is a blessing and a curse as they have only the end of VI to work from which saw the end of the Empire and peace for the Rebels. Of course they are free to make new enemies and stories but you don’t have a vested interest if its set for example 4,000 years before the rise of the Galactic Empire as in the video game, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. What I’m saying is that it has been done well before but with out the history, the story has to be good on its own terms and make sense for the Star Wars universe.

The deal will have no affect on any video game projects currently in development at Lucasfilm. However Roger Iger said The Walt Disney Company will likely do mobile and social games rather than just console. “We’ll look opportunistically at console, most likely at licensing rather than publishing. But we think given the nature of these characters and how well-known they are, they lend themselves quite nicely to the other platforms.”

I feel kind of sad that Lucasfilm and LucasArts are now own by The Walt Disney Company because certain concessions are to going to have to be made and the creators vision might have to change to appeal to The Walt Disney Company target audience which lets be honest is children. Star Wars is of course a children film in most cases but this means we are less likely to get the more adult oriented themed Star Wars products and likely more Star Wars: The Clone Wars stuff for the kiddies. Also most mobile and social games still blow hard like a straw trying to push a car.

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• My Opinion: Star Wars The Old Republic Subscriptions Plummet and is Now Going Free-To-Play.
• My Opinion: In Minecraft all Animals are Homosexuals and Why its Hard to Make Genderless Games and Films.
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• My Opinion: Final Fantasy VII PC Re-Release Announced, Trailer and Twelve Screenshots.
• My Opinion: European Court Rules That You Can Resell Downloaded Software and Games.
• Steam: LOTRO, DDO and Vindictus MMORPGs Now Available to Play for Free and My Thoughts on Them.
• Stream TERA In Your Internet Browser and My Game Streaming Thoughts.
• My Opinion: To all the People Suffering from The Kony 2012 Bandwagon Effect.
• My Opinions on the Megaupload issue. The New Picture Adorning Megaupload and the Musicians that should be Ashamed.
• Can’t Afford Minecraft or Notch’s Other Video Games? Just Pirate them says Notch.