Disney (DIS +31% YTD) has become a force, a marketing and cinematic empire of epic proportions.
Not only do they have a world wide recognizable brand in all the Disney characters and amusement parks; They have controlling interest and collaboration with ESPN, ABC, Hulu, Jim Henson’s The Muppets, Steven Spielberg, PIXAR, Marvel Comics, and now Lucasfilm.
Disney and Lucasfilm have agreed to a deal.
A deal worth $4 Billion for all the Wookiee Cookies and Spin-offs we can take.
In fact, Disney is already planning on Episode 7.
This is the same model and price that Disney used when purchasing Marvel back in 2010. Since then they have made most of that back on the Avengers alone.
Like Marvel, Star Wars has a loyal, no – make that a fanatical fan base – and is a gold mine of opportunity with potentially hundreds or thousands of characters, plots and sub-plots available for film.
Strong, this empire is.
So sorry Master Yoda.
Everyone has a price.
Sold, you are.
Maybe the next film will be called . . .
Revenge of the Mouse.
“I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.”
—Walt Disney, Disneyland; October 27, 1954
Mickey Mouse was created as a replacement for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, an earlier cartoon character created by the Disney studio for Charles Mintz of Universal Studios.[5] In the spring of 1928, with the series going strong, Disney asked Mintz for an increase in the budget. But Mintz instead demanded that Walt take a 20 percent budget cut, and as leverage, he reminded Disney that Universal owned the character, and revealed that he had already signed most of Disney’s current employees to his new contract. Mintz owned Oswald and thought he had Disney over a barrel. Angrily, Disney refused the deal and returned to produce the final Oswald cartoons he contractually owed Mintz. Disney was dismayed at the betrayal by his staff, but determined to restart from scratch. The new Disney Studio initially consisted of animator Ub Iwerks and a loyal apprentice artist, Les Clark, who together with Wilfred Jackson were among the few who remained loyal to Walt. One lesson Disney learned from the experience was to thereafter always make sure that he owned all rights to the characters produced by his company.
In the spring of 1928, Disney asked Ub Iwerks to start drawing up new character ideas. Iwerks tried sketches of various animals, such as dogs and cats, but none of these appealed to Disney. A female cow and male horse were also rejected. They would later turn up as Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar. (A male frog, also rejected, would later show up in Iwerks’ own Flip the Frog series.)[3] Walt Disney got the inspiration for Mickey Mouse from his old pet mouse he used to have on his farm. In 1925, Hugh Harman drew some sketches of mice around a photograph of Walt Disney. These inspired Ub Iwerks to create a new mouse character for Disney.[3] “Mortimer Mouse” had been Disney’s original name for the character before his wife, Lillian, convinced him to change it, and ultimately Mickey Mouse came to be.
