Weird 'Star Wars' Fan Question: Can we pool money together to buy the Star Wars rights back from Disney?
Goodness gracious, no.
The Walt Disney Company bought Lucasfilm Ltd., its intellectual properties (not just the Star Wars franchise), and all of the rights thereof from George Lucas over six years ago. Lucas chose Disney instead of, say, Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox or Paramount because he had collaborated with the House of Mouse on various projects before, including theme park attractions such as Star Tours, The Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, and Michael Jackson’s Captain Eo film.
And regardless of what a loud and vocal subgroup of fans tends to believe, other than maybe releasing too many Star Wars movies in a relatively short time, I don’t think that Lucasfilm, under the Disney aegis, has done as badly as those “Disney bashers” claim.
So…Disney is not looking to sell either Star Wars or Lucasfilm, so even if some fans can “pool money together to buy the Star Wars rights from Disney,” they can’t force Bob Iger to sell.
Furthermore, the phrase “buy back the rights” implies that fans once owned the rights to Star Wars. Nope. We did not. George Lucas owned them until the fall of 2012.
As one of my favorite characters from another Star-bound franchise says, “Your proposition is not logical.”
First hurdle: The financing. Lucasfilm Ltd. sold for $4.5 billion. In the six years since Lucas sold the company, Iger and his team have invested several billion more into creating new Star Wars attractions at Disney theme parks, made all kinds of licensing deals with other media companies, toy companies, clothing manufacturers, and other vendors to make licensed products, and have created new forms of media distribution from which to offer new Star Wars content. So the franchise, as well as the other Lucasfilm IPs, are now worth a lot more than $4.5 billion. A lot more, actually.
So, please. Enlighten me. Where are you going to raise, say, $12 billion dollars (or more) to compel Disney into selling it to you and others? Gofundme? Kickstarter? A million (or more) garage sales? A loan from President Trump?
Good luck with that.
Second hurdle: Star Wars fans. Let’s say that somehow you and your friends somehow come into a $50 billion windfall and you convince Disney to sell you the rights to Star Wars. What in the name of Darth Sidious do you do now?
Chances are that you will not be able to do anything that will please every single Star Wars fan. Depending on what your agenda is, you might make some of us happy while at the same time alienating others. You might pander to a specific constituency, but other fan factions will be incensed enough to build their own Death Star, have it hover over your house, and use its superlaser to send you to the other side of the galaxy…as a gaseous collection of atomized sub-particles.
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