An excellent piece from Businessweek describes the due diligence process undergone by Disney chief Bob Iger, which is just one of many good bits of the piece. It reveals a bit of Lucasfilm trivia I didn't know about, the Holocron:
His company maintained a database called the Holocron, named after a crystal cube powered by the Force. The real-world Holocron lists 17,000 characters in the Star Wars universe inhabiting several thousand planets over a span of more than 20,000 years. It was quite a bit for Disney to process. So Lucas also provided the company with a guide, Pablo Hidalgo. A founding member of the Star Wars Fan Boy Association, Hidalgo is now a “brand communication manager” at Lucasfilm. “The Holocron can be a little overwhelming,” says Hidalgo, who obsesses over canonical matters such as the correct spelling of Wookiee and the definitive list of individuals who met with Yoda while he was hiding in the swamps of Dagobah.
New Deleted Scenes with director Ron Howard, Warwick Davis' personal video diary, and new intros to existing featurettes are added the to pre-existing extras. Drops on 12 March, 2013.
This could theoretically open the door to the original, un-altered versions of the Original Star Wars Trilogy becoming available legally and in HD. Then again, it could result in them being just as buried as original cuts of Disney titles.
Seven (Make that eight and counting) things after listening to their conference call announcement just now:
1) Disney now owns all LucasFilm IP: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Skywalker Sound, LucasArts (games), Lucas Books/Animation/Licensing/Marketing/Online, and ILM (the company that once owned Pixar), as well as the trademark for "Droid". Disney will now own all intellectual property rights with some distribution and licensing "entaglements" based on existing deals, much like how Universal still has the Marvel theme park license for a while yet and Sony makes Spider-Man movies.
2) Much was made of Disney's global licensed product and distribution reach making better use of LucasFilm licenses, with all emphasis on the $4.05 billion paid being relative to the value of the Star Wars franchise. For example, this would imply that any Star Wars (and Indiana Jones?) licensed comic books will now go under Marvel once the current Star Wars/Dark Horse contract ends, and video games would go through Disney Interactive.
UPDATE 1:: Bob Iger: "We're likely to focus more on social and mobile than we are on console. We'll look opportunistically at console, most likely in licensing rather than publishing, but we think that given the nature of these characters and how well known they are, and the storytelling, that they lend themselves quite nicely, as they've already demonstrated to the other platforms" ...so maybe Star Wars comics are safe at Dark Horse? ...I want to say no way in hell, when you own one of the two megalithic comic publishers...
3) Disney plans to release a new Star Wars movie every 2-3 years starting in 2015. All of them will be in 3D.
4) Star Wars Episodes 7, 8, and 9 will be a trilogy. The treatment is done, is in "early stage development", and the movies are to be released every other year.
5) ILM will remain a studio-agnostic gun for hire. Disney does not want to change anything about how they operate.
6) Fox retains ownership and distribution of all existing Star Wars movies (until that contract expires... UPDATE 4:: Episode 4 is owned "in perpituity" and all other existing movies are owned through 2020). Disney can use any and all characters from the entire Star Wars canon in all of its new movies. All future films will be distributed by Disney, unlike Paramount retaining partial distribution rights when Marvel was acquired. No mention was made of who now owns the Star Wars Holiday Special.
7) They made it extremely clear that the Indiana Jones (and other non-SW) IP was not factored into their valuation of LucasFilm, only Star Wars and Star Wars-related IP. They made an oblique reference to "entanglements" (i.e., Paramount's distribution and ownership of the existing movies and, I expect Young Indy, if they remember it exists).
8) This may be reaching, but they made repeated reference to the broader reach of the Disney content family in general, and toward the end someone asked about the Disney Faeries and other "girl-oriented" IP expansions and how they'd handle that. Disney sidestepped addressing it in terms of specific plans, but acknowledged that they have many plans in this area for sure.
UPDATE 2:: Bob Iger: "We love the fact that this will take its place in our live-action strategy as a known and loved brand. We really like Star Wars’ potential on TV, and Disney XD would be a great home for that."
This means that the long-rumored live-action Star Wars TV series is just the tip of the iceberg. No word on how Clone Wars (distributed by Warner Bros on home video) falls into any of this.
9) I just realized this means that Disney now fully owns Captain EO and Star Tours. This deal has been in the works for a long while, I guarantee you. Think about it.
All in all, and call it controversial, but I firmly believe this is the best possible thing to happen to Star Wars in a long, long time.
I'm re-listening to my recording of the call and will update as necessary with corrections and additions.
