The situation of Disney after the acquisition of Lucasfilm

With the acquisition of Lucasfilm the Disney received assets including its massively popular Star Wars franchise, operating businesses in live action film production, consumer products, animation, visual effects, and audio post production, as well as a substantial portfolio of cutting-edge entertainment technologies, which operated under the names of Industrial Light & Magic, and Skywalker Sound. The deal between Disney and Lucas was expected to strengthen Disneys position as a leading global provider of high-quality branded entertainment and build long-term shareholder value Looking on the bright side of the deal purchase of Lucasfilm will bring the company at least three new Star Wars movies, and many new ways for the company to boost its digital media revenue. As quoted by CEO Disney Bob Igor It is a sustainable source of brand, high-quality creative content with tremendous global appeal that will benefit all of Disneys business units and is incredibly well suited for new business models, including digital platforms. When evaluating the outcome we can see that, The commercial opportunity to produce more new Star Wars movies is enormous. If the new movie opportunity alone justifies the purchase price. Star Wars is the surest movie franchise for a lifetime. the box office grosses were massive for episodes 1-3, despite the fact that those movies were terrible. If Disney can make halfway decent movies, the revenues (including licensing, home video, etc.) should be huge. And if Disney can do with Star Wars what it did with Pirates of the Caribbean, the company has a shot at owning the most important new feature franchise. Back to back acquisition With Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm, Disney has gobbled up the biggest fantasy league of the present generation. Disney is burnishing its reputation as the dominant and most trusted steward of established family-friendly franchises. There are a number of ways for the company to derive value from Lucasfilm's intellectual property, some of which can be realized immediately while others will accrue to us over time. The toys & parks synergies with Star Wars seems massive Disney is uniquely positioned to leverage these opportunities. The opportunity to build Star Warsthemed parks & lands is much more than parks involving Pixar properties or even Harry Potter. The gap between Disney and everyone else is widening, and owning Star Wars (and to a lesser degree Marvel) will help Disney increase its leadership advantage. Industrial Light & Magic Being the leading FX organization in the business and considered to be profitable as its the first stop in FX for big budget movies.

BENEFITS OF THE DEAL

When George Iger, Disney CEO and Chairman declared to the world on 30th October 2012 that they are going to acquire Lucasfilm they set the other entertainment houses on alert. Disney it seems stand to gain enormously from the deal. The characters of star wars they possess now are very popular. If handled well they can make the Disney future very bright. Some of the benefits of the deal are 1. Immensely successful past The kind of opening first star wars film got, with people waiting for weeks to get the ticket was huge. If same kind of interest Disney is able to generate for future episodes than deal can be a huge success for them. 2. Freshness injected George Lucas was over experimenting with his characters lately which was very boring. Shifting the franchise to Disney will bring freshness to franchise and consequently a lot of new ideas for new episodes with new director. 3. Added excitement to Disneyland parks Disney likes to incorporate its movies and characters into its theme parks around the world, and what better "land" to have at Disney World than Hothland? Explore the Rebel base. Have simulated laser battles with your friends in an Imperial Walker, Snowspeeder or AT-AT. Pretend you're Luke Skywalker by crawling inside the belly of a Tauntaun. 4. Additional business opportunities Disney is very popular for selling merchandise of its movie characters. As star wars have a whole lot of characters, Disney can take advantage of it and can aggressively promote Star wars related merchandise and make a successful business out of it. Overall the purchase of Lucas film which includes Copyrights for Stars Wars, some (modest) producer share for the Indiana Jones series and the CGI, post production service businesses created by Lucas is a classic and sound strategic move in the media and entertainment world. The deal will go through as 50% in cash transfer and 50% in shares (40 million) of Disney provided to George Lucas. Disney also got included some of the subsidiaries of Lucasfilm Limited (LLC). The surprise deal will also give Disney other noteworthy assets, including the pioneering visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Skywalker Sound. ILM is considered one of the preeminent visual effects firms in the industry, known for its high-level work on the "Stars Wars," "Indiana Jones" and "Jurassic Park" movies, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Iron Man" films and an upcoming "Star Trek" film from J.J. Abrams. Owning an in-house visual effects company could give Disney a leg up at a time when increasingly expensive visual effects are increasingly important to the success of movies. Visual effects can cost as much as $60 million on a big-budget movie. This will significantly lower the costs of making visual effects. According to Dave Rand, senior visual effects supervisor said It's far more efficient to have everything close to home

and having everything under one roof rather than having to go to several locations to get their movie done."

Lucasfilm Limited is based in San Francisco with a major piece of real estate around it. Disney can use the additional space there to expand its other animation and film operations A part of which may spill over into Marin County in terms of job creation. Filmmaking generates jobs ranging from model-making to catering. As Disney has announced after the deal that another episode of Star Wars will be in cinemas by 2015, many persons will be employed in the area. After the deal, George Lucas announced that he will donate the $4.05 billion to a foundation focused on education. In his own words I am dedicating the majority of my wealth to improving education. It is the key to the survival of the human race. We have to plan for our collective future and the first step begins with the social, emotional, and intellectual tools we provide to our children. As humans, our greatest tool for survival is our ability to think and to adapt as educators, storytellers, and communicators our responsibility is to continue to do so. So it can be said that even society has benefitted from the Disney-Lucasfilm deal as thousands of children will get education and may contribute to human development.