On this day 11 years ago, at around 8pm UK time, Disney announced their purchase of Lucasfilm, and the trilogy that many fans never dared dream would arrive was also announced. After a casual conversation in May the previous year between Bob Iger and George Lucas, where Iger asked Lucas if he’d consider selling Lucasfilm to which Lucas initially indicated no, he soon announced plans to retire and a meeting with Kathleen Kennedy led to her being offered co-chairmanship of Lucasfilm and by the time of Celebration VI in Orlando, the principal cast were told of plans to make Episode VII, and June when 5 months of negotiations with Iger and Disney began, ending when Disney paid Lucas US$4.05 billion.
11 years later we’ve had five films, four of which passed a billion dollars and one – The Force Awakens – is in the top five highest grossing movies of all time, a fifth Indiana Jones adventure, five live action TV shows including the show that launched Disney Plus The Mandalorian, a season of Willow, a number of documentaries including Light & Magic which has a second season on the way, 7 animated shows including the 7th and final season of The Clone Wars, and plenty more on the way. Galaxy’s Edge was built and opened, we’ve had seven Celebrations and countless comics, books and games.
For those who endured the dark times and survived on meagre scraps, this deluge of Star Wars has been a shift; for new fans coming into the fandom, it’s a constant supply of new content, and to quote Count Dooku this is just the beginning.
