Disney Looking to Apply the Marvel Cinematic Universe Formula to Star Wars.

Marvel's The Avengers

While things have been kept under wraps pretty well since Episode VII resumed filming, tidbits of information about the future of the Star Wars franchise go around the web. Case in point, Variety recently had a brief interview with a Disney representative who was able to confirm what many of us were expecting from Disney in regard to the plethora of spin-offs – to use the model established by the movies in the Avengers continuity to create a shared universe across multiple locations and eras.

 

Marvel Studios did the unprecedented starting in 2008 – they created a series of films comprised of several different franchises that interlock into a single shared universe, culminating in the third-highest-grossing film of all time. Over the course of ten films (with an eleventh and several more on the horizon) and several tie-ins, the company was able to create a rich setting full of courageous heroes, criminals, terrorists, alien invaders, and an overarching plot about a powerful conqueror from the furthest reaches of space planning to do something dastardly by obtaining six MacGuffins spread throughout the universe. And they still had room to put a Howard The Duck cameo into one of their movies (most likely to George Lucas’s horror).

 

Howard The Duck Marvel

In the short run, this made Marvel a lot of money – especially Disney, once they officially took over the company – and in the long run, it’s proven to be an extremely effective tactic, to the point where Marvel’s top competitor DC Comics is now hard at work to create a shared universe of their own. From that business standpoint, it makes perfect sense that they’d want to recreate that successful format with a similarly-large setting in terms of scope – and as we’ve heard from Devin Faraci, it has the potential to work out very well. However, now we have an official source reporting in – Variety talked with Disney’s CFO James “Jay” Rasulo about the franchise, and he confirms that Faraci’s testimony is accurate.

When Disney bought [Lucasfilm], “Star Wars” was already one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises, having earned $4.4 billion globally from six movies, and billions more from TV shows, videogames, theme park rides and merchandise. Disney just felt it could do even better, and the mantra at the company concerning “Star Wars” is: “do everything, but do it faster because we already know the route, and take it through the same channels” that worked so well for Marvel, said chief financial officer Jay Rasulo, who spoke Wednesday at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia Conference in New York. There are similarities and differences between Lucasfilm and Marvel and their properties, “but the similarities are far greater.”
 
“The notion that you could put together a series of origin films, of characters that were not that well-known whether it was Thor, whether it was Captain America, even Iron Man before our acquisition and then have those characters assemble in a movie that just blew the doors off called ‘The Avengers’ — it was something that was on the drawing board with the Marvel Studios people but then we actually did it and that was fantastic,” Rasulo said.

 

250px-LucasfilmStoryTeam-TORGS (1)

In general, it’s sounding more and more like the team at Lucasfilm has everything related to the Sequel Trilogy mapped out in advance – after all, Episode VIII is rumored to target a 2017 release, and Episode IX in 2019 – and that it’s just a matter of getting there that’s the biggest challenge for the company. If Disney is pursuing this path as Rasulo has suggested, it would mean it may take roughly two-thirds of the time to make the Sequel Trilogy than it took to make either the Prequel Trilogy or the Original Trilogy – and during the off-years, spin-off installments will build upon the universe in the same way that Iron ManThe Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America were able to build up to a major film.

 

The thing is, Star Wars has been able to build a large universe with six films alone, and the content provided in Legends was more than enough to give the original Marvel Comics continuity a run for its money. Now, we have official confirmation that Disney wants to go the extra mile and outdo themselves with Star Wars, and that’s quite an undertaking – but, given that they were able to do the unprecedented and make the Marvel Cinematic Universe happen in the first place, it may prove to be an unthinkable task that can be accomplished after all.

 

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Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.

Grant Davis (Pomojema)

Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.

17 thoughts on “Disney Looking to Apply the Marvel Cinematic Universe Formula to Star Wars.

  • September 11, 2014 at 11:44 pm
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    I think Episode VII will blow the doors off of ANY of the Marvel films mentioned here.

  • September 11, 2014 at 11:52 pm
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    I’m not sure what to think About this. Does this mean they want to give big roles to background and comic characters everyone forgot, or do we get totaly new characters in the spinofs who are getting a part in the normal serie later, or does disney want to make a cross-over with other Disney universes, please not the last one. This is realy confusing, probably i’ve just read this post to fast and mixing everything up.

  • September 12, 2014 at 12:01 am
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    Give us another movie starring TEEK!!!

  • September 12, 2014 at 12:10 am
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    As long as they keep the quality up and don’t ruin things, I don’t care what they do.
    Personally I don’t like the Marvel movies, they’re all samey and soulless, but they sure do churn them out, so we won’t be starved of Star Wars for the next few years or so, and hopefully that’ll be a good thing.

  • September 12, 2014 at 12:35 am
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    It will be harder to apply this process to Star Wars than it was to apply it to Marvel because the nature of comics is that in a sense anything goes (Norse gods, aliens, mad scientists, blue, purple, gold etc) while one fundamental thing about Star Wars is that it’s profusion in carefully curated and that’s what makes it distinct (the controled color palette, the lack of green aliens with pointy shoulder pads, the realism of the languages etc ).

  • September 12, 2014 at 12:45 am
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    I hope not. Star Wars movies shouldn’t be a two hour ad for another Star Wars movie.

  • September 12, 2014 at 3:39 am
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    I don’t want them to follow the Marvel model. I want spin-offs and stuff but I only want them to loosely tie in. I don’t want main characters from Star Wars Episode 7,8,9 getting their own spin-off films in between those films. Where they have to cram stuff in so they can start building up to the next movie. It becomes one long ad for another movie which is just another long ad for another movie. Than the big movie comes out, like Avengers, and its cool but it leaves you wanting because they already announced the trilogy, the next batch of spin-off films and everything else. So you relive the same process over and over again.

    Then all the films start following a predictable formula. Sure, they are entertaining but highly predictable and feel interchangeable at times. It becomes more and more disappointing as each film is released. Then a good movie like Cap 2 or Guardians is made but it also is just a tie in to everything else so its not really a great movie because its just continual build up over and over.

    Like this rant. Which is over. For now. Or is it?

  • September 12, 2014 at 4:59 am
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    It is sad when Star Wars takes the back seat to Marvel in the eyes of Disney. But we all knew that (example: “Avengers 2” title being released well over two years in advance. And we are still waiting for episode VII’s title… )

    • September 12, 2014 at 5:47 am
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      J. J. is waiting to reveal the title when he thinks the time is right. Disney doesn’t have anything to do with that.

  • September 12, 2014 at 5:44 am
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    You know nothing, Tim Snow.

  • September 12, 2014 at 6:43 am
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    If everything goes to plan, this next trilogy could be very entertaining, very well choreographed and very well structured, so far so good; however, no one seems to be asking a very important question: Will these movies be Classics? JJ is in serious danger of making “a better, Star Wars-ier version of Thor” as opposed to “the movie that defined a generation”. Star Trek example: people still talk about Wrath of Khan (periodically), but people have already stopped talking about JJ’s Star Trek after a few years. Not that I doubt JJ’s ability, his sense of priority is going to be tested. As a reminder, when G Lucas directed New Hope he had not decided that Darth Vader was Luke’s papa. He did “plan” Revenge o’da Sith for at least half a decade. ‘Reason “Empire” worked, planned or not, was because it was a good idea. Planning – or lack thereof – is no guarantee of quality. Will be interesting to see how this pans out.

    • September 12, 2014 at 11:07 am
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      IMHO, ESB worked because Irvin Kirshner knew what he was doing.

    • September 12, 2014 at 11:34 pm
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      It will be hard for Ep 7 to be a generation defining event because it isn’t a new IP. A New Hope was the first of its kind – an independent feature set in space with effects, production and an overall “feel” that hadn’t been attempted before. It set the mark for the movies we enjoy today. Now can JJ redefine what Star Wars is and bring it back to its former glory? I think so, based on the photos and videos I’m seeing.

  • September 12, 2014 at 9:20 am
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    Hope they don’t put Marvel and SW in the same table.
    Except one or two, marvel movies are for silly people, ingorant dialogs and situations, abuse of bad cgi, poor stories, overactings, a really bad bad bad humor and nonsense final results…
    Do i really have to put exemples?

  • September 12, 2014 at 12:33 pm
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    I want to care for the characters, i want to be heartbroken when they die, i want drama, conversation, dialogue basically i just want to feel something. If they can incorporate this into the movies like they did in ESB then i’ll be a happy man. Lets not dilute this beautiful thing we all love.

  • September 13, 2014 at 1:33 am
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    I just want to see more black people in the universe

  • September 27, 2014 at 6:44 pm
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    If it is done ‘right’, and the quality is there, then I am all for it. To be honest, I can’t complain at this point. I always wanted more Live-Action stuff, as opposed to the silly kiddy 3D movies.

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