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In October of 2012, George Lucas gave up the ghost. He sold his entire stake in Lucasfilm, the company bearing his name. Disney acquired the company and its intellectual property for a cool $4 billion. Despite the fact that all of our opinions were based in conjecture and speculation, Box Office Prophets still named this purchase as the number one Film Industry Story of 2012. Here are the relevant points from that piece:
“The core of Lucasfilm, the Star Wars franchise, has earned $4.5 billion from global box office sales alone. It has earned an additional $3.8 billion from home video, $2.9 billion from videogame licenses, $1.8 billion from book sales and $1.3 billion via other revenue streams. That’s a rough estimate of $14.3 billion over the course of the franchise’s 35 years in existence. And you will notice that I left out a key component in the calculations above.

Toy sales comprise the overwhelming majority of annual Star Wars sales. Estimates place total toy sales for Star Wars north of $12 billion. While no one outside of Lucasfilm’s accounting office will ever know for sure, these numbers are semi-confirmed by Forbes Magazine. They also note that in 2011 alone, Star Wars sold $1.5 billion worth of toys and games.”

Reading the above, you should draw the conclusion that buying the Star Wars franchise for so little money was a coup for Disney. In fact, I viewed it as functional arbitrage at the time since nobody sells toys like the Mouse House. The only noteworthy item from that item was how Disney would use the Star Wars movie brand as a Trojan horse for enhanced toy sales:

“Simultaneous with the announcement of purchase, CEO Bob Iger offered glorious news to fans of Lucas’ storied franchise. A new movie will be released in 2015, the first of a long rumored trilogy concluding Lucas’ initial story arc from the 1970s.

“Simply put, there is nothing but upside to this transaction for Disney, George Lucas and pretty much all the rest of us. We the people win with Star Wars becoming a Disney property. We get more Star Wars while Disney picks our wallets clean, which they were already doing anyway.”

Three years ago, with no script, no cast, and no George Lucas attached, Star Wars 7 was totally theoretical. Only three years later, it’s something entirely different. The fun began roughly halfway between the Disney acquisition and now. Rumors cropped up almost immediately after the announcement of Star Wars 7 that the key players from the original cast would return. George Lucas himself leaked this information, proving yet again that he didn’t have a firm grasp on how fast news spreads on the internet.

The producers of Star Wars 7, including Kathleen Kennedy, Lucas’ hand-picked successor to run Lucasfilm, all professed no knowledge of this rumor for almost a year. On April 29, 2014, Disney confirmed everything. While announcing the new cast for the project, they acknowledged that Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, and (most important) Harrison Ford would return to the roles they’d originally performed in 1977. At that moment, it was clear that franchise fans would finally enjoy something they’d wanted since 1983: resolution.

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