Talking About 'Star Wars' Do you think Disney has done a better job with 'Star Wars' than Lucasfilm?

Do you think Disney has done a better job with Star Wars than Lucasfilm?

Questions such as “Do you think Disney has done a better job with Star Wars than Lucasfilm?” reflect either willful ignorance or a misunderstanding of the corporate relationship between The Walt Disney Company (TWDC or “Disney”) and Lucasfilm Ltd., especially when it comes to the topic of Star Wars.

The relationship between TWDC and Lucasfilm is no different from that of Sony and Columbia Pictures or the “old” 20th Century Fox Film Corporation and Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox (and before that, News Corporation). TWDC is the “corporate parent,” while Lucasfilm is an editorially-independent production company with its own President.

Lucasfilm, for the most part, has free rein to decide how to handle its two major franchises, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones. TWDC has the right to decide when and how movies are scheduled for production and distribution, since it doesn’t want to have intramural difficulties with its other studios, including Walt Disney Motion Pictures, Marvel Studios, and as of Spring 2019. 20th Century Fox. But as far as what gets made, Lucasfilm has control over which projects get made and which ones are shelved.

As it stands now, only three companies have ever “made” Star Wars films (in the context of paying the production costs):

• 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, which financed the making of the original 1977 Star Wars
• Lucasfilm Ltd. independently produced the first five follow-up films to Star Wars, a feat made possible when George Lucas and his legal team got exclusive rights to all merchandising licenses and sequel rights during the negotiations with Fox for the making of Star Wars
• J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions co-produced Star Wars: The Force Awakens with Disney-owned Lucasfilm. The same arrangement was made when Abrams agreed to return to the franchise after Colin Trevorrow bailed on Star Wars Episode IX

When Lucasfilm was still owned by George Lucas, Star Wars movies were distributed by two studios: Fox released both the Original and the Prequel Trilogies as part of negotiations with Lucasfilm, while Warner Bros. had the distribution rights to the 2008 Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie because the eponymous TV series aired on Time-Warner’s Cartoon Network cable channel.

Again, to clarify: Lucasfilm produced Episodes I, II, III, V, and VI; Fox distributed them to theaters and got a cut of the box office take. Lucasfilm made Star Wars: The Clone Wars; Warner Bros. handled the distribution and got its share of the profits. Neither Fox or Warner Bros. made editorial nitpicks to those films. unlike the experience that a hat-in-his-hand Lucas had when he had to get Star Wars financed by a skeptical Fox board of directors back in the mid-1970s.

While it is true that Alan Horn and Bob Iger at TWDC have a lot of say when it concerns certain business-only factors (including release dates and merchandising), they don’t tell Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy what to make and how to make it. They are only “responsible” for the success or failure of any Star Wars film if they don’t pay a lot of attention to release dates and their effect on the franchise, and also in the sense that a captain is “responsible” for the conduct of his or her crew aboard a ship.

As to whether Lucasfilm has done “better” with Star Wars since it was purchased by TWDC in 2012, that all depends on your point of view.

Just remember, though: Between 1977 and 2012, Lucasfilm only produced seven feature-length Star Wars theatrical films and one CG-animated TV series, plus a gaggle of unremarkable television projects that most fans would rather forget about (including 1978’s The Star Wars Holiday Special). If George Lucas’s post-2005 statements that his saga only consisted of the six Skywalker Saga films and the Star Wars: The Clone Wars series, then Star Wars would have stagnated, kept alive only by re-releases of the films and the ever-more-convoluted Expanded Universe books and comics.

Lucasfilm under the aegis of TWDC has reinvigorated the Star Wars franchise. In less than seven years, five new Star Wars films have been made, including the upcoming Episode IX; The Rise of Skywalker and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. All but one have performed exceedingly well at the box office; the one misfire, Solo: A Star Wars Story, might have fared better had its creative issues and problematic release date not been factors in its underwhelming box office performance.

Furthermore, “new” Lucasfilm has done well on the television side, with Lucasfilm Animation’s Star Wars Rebels now behind it, viewers now have a new series, Star Wars: Resistance and a sixth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which Disney (wrongly, I think) canceled in 2013 instead of bringing it to a proper pre-Revenge of the Sith ending. Fans will also get a post-Return of the Jedi series created by Jon Favreau.

If that’s not doing a better job, I don’t know what is.