Talkin' About....'Star Wars': or, Straightforward Answers to Silly Questions about 'Star Wars'

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(C) 2015 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)
Someone asked this question on Quora recently:

 How many more Star Wars movies are left to make from the original books?

 My Answer: 
Star Wars is not a movie franchise that is based on a book or series of books. The Saga comprised of Episodes I-IX and its various TV and film offshoots got its start on May 25, 1977 with the release of the original Star Wars, which is also known by its 1981 alternate title, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. (Some fans use either A New Hope or ANH, but most folks just call it Star Wars.)
Now, even if you argue that a novel titled Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker was published in late 1976, almost six months before the film’s official premiere, you still have to remember that it was based on an earlier draft of the movie’s screenplay. (Herman Raucher did the same thing with his screenplay for Robert Mulligan’s Summer of ‘42. To build interest for the 1971 film, Raucher novelized his script and published it first; even today, many Summer of ’42 fans swear the film is based on the book. It’s not. And other writers have done this, most notably Erich Segal with Love Story.)
All of the Star Wars novels and comics, whether they are canonical or part of the old “Expanded Universe”/Legends bibliography, are derivative works set in the Star Wars universe. In most cases, novels, short story anthologies, comics, and the story-only bits of licensed Star Wars video games published after 2014 are officially part of the Star Wars story. Lucasfilm sometimes dips into the EU/Legends well and takes characters that the powers-that-be think fit well with established canon and adds them to the lore. Coruscant, the name for the capital planet of the Galactic Republic/Galactic Empire, was originally used in the EU. So were Grand Admiral Thrawn, Aayla Secura, and Quinlan Vos.
But the screenplays for The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and From His Nap (as many wags like to jokingly refer to the yet untitled Episode IX) have little to do with the EU/Legends novels. There may be a few thematic similarities, but so far the two versions of the post-Return of the Jedi universe are definitely dissimilar.

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