Q&As About 'Star Wars': Who REALLY Calls the Shots Regarding 'Star Wars'? (Hint: It's NOT Disney)

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know (or should know) that one of my pet peeves is cognitive dissonance. It doesn't matter if it involves politics, interpersonal relationships, or pop culture, but I am easily annoyed when people willfully ignore facts and publicly express notions that are based on personal opinion or political dogma.

For instance, in the Star Wars fandom, there is a subgroup of fans that continually ascribe decisions made by Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company that creates content for both the Indiana Jones and the Star Wars franchises to its parent company, The Walt Disney Company. No matter what it is - whether it's the announcement that a new film or TV series is being considered or that a new book is going to be published, it's never Lucasfilm that gets credit (or the criticism) for the decision, it's Disney. 

Allow me to illustrate by sharing yet another Star Wars-related item from Quora.

In the Star Wars category, Jensen Node asks:

What Disney touches have been incorporated into Star Wars movies?

As an entertainment observer who has been writing about the industry since my days as a high school journalist, I’m bemused by how little the public understands about the business end of making movies.

I say this because, quite frankly, I keep on seeing questions like this online every day.

Why did Disney classify the Star Wars Expanded Universe as Legends and remove it from canon?

Did Disney ruin Star Wars?

Will Disney allow X to write Y for Star Wars?

Why did Disney buy Star Wars from George Lucas?

As they used to say in the old Breck Shampoo commercial:

“And so on, and so on, and so on….”

How hard is it, o sweet summer child, to understand that Disney does not micromanage any of its subsidiaries (which include ESPN, ABC, 20th Century Fox, Marvel Studios, or, in this specific instance, Lucasfilm Ltd.)?

While it is true that Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studio (The Walt Disney Company’s umbrella parent of the above-named subsidiaries) is, as they say, “in the decision-making loop” as far as when films are produced and how they are marketed and released. it is Lucasfilm that makes the all-important decisions related to canon, editorial content, and who gets to write and direct specific projects.

Previously, before George Lucas retired and sold his company to the House of Mouse, the only entity outside of Lucasfilm’s San Rafael, CA headquarters to exert the sort of editorial control you ascribe to “Disney” was 20th Century Fox between 1974 and 1977. That’s when Lucas was still an up-and-coming young director with one successful film (American Graffiti) under his belt but not yet the successful producer of not one but two franchises, Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

Back then, Lucas was still going from studio to studio, with his story outline for what he then called The Star Wars, pitching it to skeptical executives who did not believe that “that science movie” would be more than a modest two-weekend hit. Universal Pictures’ Ned Tanen, who knew Lucas from American Graffiti because the studio had financed and distributed it in ‘73, rejected Star Wars. So did Warner Bros., for whom Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola had made THX-1138 in 1971.

And if Vice President for Development Alan Ladd, Jr. not seen American Graffiti and convinced Fox’s nervous Board of Directors to put up the money for Lucas’s space fantasy set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” there would have been no Star Wars.

Star Wars is billed as a Lucasfilm Ltd. production because all the people involved in its physical manufacture was done by Lucas and people he hired, but it was paid for by 20th Century Fox. And if Lucas had not been smart enough to make sure he negotiated his way into the merchandising and sequel rights - something the studio was not interested in at the time - Fox might have ended up owning not just Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, but the entire franchise as well.

Thanks to Lucas’s prescience, it was Lucasfilm that financed the bulk of the George Lucas era films, starting with 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back and ending with 2008’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars. 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros., respectively, were responsible for putting six movies (five Saga Episodes, one animated feature) in theaters and, later, on home media for a share of the profits.

In the post-Lucas era, Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studio is responsible for the financing of Lucasfilm’s projects, as well as the seemingly mundane details of scheduling, marketing, and distribution. Here is the one key area where “Disney” calls the shots, and this is where Bob Iger and Alan Horn need to improve if they are going to avoid another setback along the lines of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Other than that, though, “Disney” does not call up Kathleen Kennedy, President of Lucasfilm, and tell her what kind of movies the studio should make. Nor does Bob Iger have a checklist of “Disney touches” to add to the films.

Look carefully at the opening title sequence in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Notice that where there used to be the 20th Century Fox studio logo and Alfred Newman’s Fox Fanfare, there’s no “Walt Disney Pictures” logo before the Lucasfilm company logo and the “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” card.

In fact, other than a brief mention of Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios and a “Soundtrack available on Walt Disney Records” line in the credits, “Disney” makes it a point to emphasize that authorship of all post-2012 Star Wars movie content is credited to Lucasfilm Ltd.

So if you are worried that you’ll see Mickey Mouse as a Jedi Knight or Peter Pan getting a cameo in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, you can relax.