Disney just bought the entire Star Wars IP from LucasFilm.
Yikes!
You can read the whole thing here on EW.com.
And here's the official announcement:
Double-yikes!
What I liked about Lucas recently was that George Lucas took his retirement not long and said the Star Wars films were over. You might like or dislike the prequels, but with Episode 1 to 6 it made for one long continuous single storyline - leaving the rest, expanded universe, games, tv series open to play around.
So what does Disney do right away?
Announced Star Wars Episode VII for 2015!!
With two more sequels expected to be released in 2017 and 2019, respectively!!
$$$
Negative feels:
I'm pretty sure the new movies won't even try to accommodate or play around the EU, but just plain erase it...
Disney love acquiring money making series and sort of don't care much after that. After a decent but forgettable Prince of Persia movie adaptation and a decent but forgettable Tron movie sequel.... I'm partially sure these new movies will end up pretty forgettable (and therefore even more so than the prequels - which are mostly damaged by too much CGi, read on this old blog analysis!)
On the plus side:
Heck! If they might make something similar to Avengers' level of quality...
(let's not kid ourselves, that might have been mostly part thanks to Joss Whedon...)
Oh, and another point I just thought about.
If you can judge things from past experience, what with Disney cancelling the awesome Spectacular Spider-man (the best Spider-man animated series in years!!!) to replace it by their own Disney XD series Ultimate Spider-man series (which got my attention in the first episode but is just too bad, ,cheap, childish and annoying) - they will probably never let that live Star Wars series happen (but it was coming full circle, a movie series inspired by old serials going back to the TV series format!!) and they'll probably can the amazing Clone Wars before its coming up conclusion for something much worse.
• Update #2
And it seems "Disney didn't buy Star Wars"...
They bought the entire LucasFilms and all its subsidiary companies. Yes, that means ILM, THX, LucasArts, etc. It seems they were able to get in there thanks to Lucas recently taking his retirement not long ago. (remember when he said there would be no more Star Wars movie?) And that means all of Lucas IPs! And fans asking for a Willow 2 or another American Graphitti? The PR guy from Disney sounded pretty surprised, guess they don't even know or care they got these IPs from their deal, they're mostly interested in the lucrative Star Wars expanded universe deal and toy merchandise. Oh, and expect an Indiana Jones 5 for 2014 (even though it still is co-owned by Paramount in part)
Good.
Bad.
Only time will tell about that - but one way or another, everything in this franchise will changed forever now!
Oh, and Princess Leia is now officially a Disney Princess too.