Disney Buys Lucasfilm with ILM for $4.05 Billion

Tuesday it was announced that Disney has bought Lucasfilm from George Lucas for $4.05 billion. Lucasfilm's main properties that matter a great deal to Disney are Star Wars, Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound (sound effects, mixing for most movies). ILM is the company that did all the visual effects for all three Transformers films and invented most of the effects we see in movies for the last 30+ years. It is assumed they are doing Transformers 4's effects but now that ILM is part of Paramount's movie studio competition, who knows if they will keep such an important summer tent pole picture there. Disney has posted several videos about the acquistion (below) making surprising use of the internet to get info about this purchase across. Normally something like this would be handled with a press release and maybe a quick press conference. Companies should pay attention to this approach.

Highlights:
- A new Star Wars Trilogy was announced with Episodes 7 (for 2015), 8 (for 2017), and 9 (2019). Treatments already exist for this.
- George Lucas will be a consultant on the film. He will not be writing or directing them. No details on who will be.
- Fox will not distribute the third Star Wars trilogy but retain the rights to distribute Star Wars Episode 1-6.
- Disney are interested in more Star Wars cartoons for DisneyXD. No mention of the live action Star Wars TV series that Lucas had quietly been working on for years.
- No plans for Indiana Jones as Paramount has the rights. With this legal wrinkle, chances of a new movies are probably toast (but both Spielberg and Lucas were not interested in doing more anyway).
- Dark Horse Comics will keep the Star Wars license "for the near future." More then likely the 20+ year relationship will come to an end whenever the contact expires that Disney inherited. After their Marvel buy, the Disney comics were taken from other comic publishers as soon as legally allowed.