‘Star Wars’ Films Headed to Disney’s Linear Networks Starting October 7 With Four-Movie Marathon on FX
Don’t touch that dial! All twelve Star Wars movies will air on television not just on networks owned by Turner (itself owned by Warner Bros. Discovery), but Disney’s own channels as well, starting this month.
Deadline reports that Disney has renegotiated their domestic television contracts with Turner. As a result of the updates on the licensing agreements for the Star Wars films on television, various Disney-owned channels (such as ABC, Freeform, and the FX family of networks) will now be able to take viewers to a galaxy far, far away alongside Turner’s channels (including TBS, TNT, and Turner Classic Movies). The twelve released films, from A New Hope in 1977 to The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, are all included as part of the present contract for both sets of networks. Of course, the movies are also available on Disney Plus, the go-to place for Star Wars movies and shows on streaming – and a move that happened thanks to a shrewd compromise between Disney and Turner when Bob Iger made a huge push to get Disney into the streaming space.
The previous iteration of the deal, which lasted from September 2016 to September 2023 and was valued at $250 million, allowed Turner to air the six George Lucas-overseen, Twentieth Century Fox-distributed films whenever they wanted, while also giving them options for the five Disney-made movies for limited windows. The current deal includes the twelve films, although it is not clear how licensing with films that have yet to be made and released will factor into this – nor how long the latest iteration of the agreement will last for, although it is expected that it will expire for both parties at the same time.
To commemorate this new start, FX is set to celebrate with a four-movie marathon on FX with 1977’s A New Hope, 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, 1983’s Return of the Jedi, and – inexplicably – 2008’s The Clone Wars pilot film for the animated series on Saturday, October 7. Plans for the airing of the other eight movies in the series have not been made available at this time.
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.
