[Blue Ink]

Disney overpaid.

All they get are the characters. The right to make Star Wars VII? After the last three were so awful? Xers won’t get fooled again, and Gen Y doesn’t care. There’s no audience for VII.

So what else do they get in buying Lucasfilm? Industrial Light & Magic? Don’t think so; separate company. Skywalker Ranch? Will Lucas let go of that?

The character merchandising rights? Did Lucas give them up or only split?

Bad incomplete reporting, but right now sounds like Disney waaaaaaay overpaid.

[freedumb2003]

>>All they get are the characters. The right to make Star Wars VII? After the last three were so awful? Xers won’t get fooled again, and Gen Y doesn’t care. There’s no audience for VII.<<

I suspect the audience for Ep VII is much vaster than you think. It will probably do close to $1 Bln (as did Phantom Menace, arguably the worst of all 6).

Disney, being Disney, probably got the merchandising rights — I can;t imagine a scenario where that doesn’t happen.

At 4B, Disney will recoup their money in about 5 years — faster if they make a SW VIII.

[discostu]

They get ILM, Skywalker Sound, LucasArts (the video games), and yes the new Ranch (Lucas already got rid of the old ranch, turned it into project housing). And they also get the Indiana Jones franchise. Really even if it was just the characters it’s a bargain price, the characters means the merchandising, and Star Wars merch is a license to print money.

[kevkrom]

Disney got everything. The entire Lucas empire. Whether or not they overpaid is yet to be seen, but ongoing Star Wars licensing/merchandising is already a 9-figure business annually, and a successful resurrection of the series would make that number grow dramatically.