This isn’t a new trailer for “Rogue One,” the Star Wars movie due out at the end of the year. Instead it’s a “celebration reel,” which includes new footage and snippets of interviews with the cast and crew.
New Star Wars ‘Rogue One’ footage!
And a lesson about the value of really, really popular characters and stories.
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
There are more words below the clip, but here’s the thing you want to see:
Cool, right? Maybe you want to watch it again. I do. Go ahead, take your time. I won’t be offended.
So, we’re a business publication, so let’s just take a minute to remember that in 2012, Disney bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion. The same price that the Ultimate Fighting Championship just went for.
You can argue the merits of the UFC deal, but in retrospect it seems pretty clear that Disney got a fantastic deal for its $4 billion, because Lucasfilm is an amazing asset.
Not only does Disney get the rights to the first six Star Wars movies and the ability to complete the series with three more (last year’s “The Force Awakens” was the first of those), but it is also going to make even more Star Wars content, like “Rogue One.” That one isn’t part of the formal series but is a sort of side adventure — “a Star Wars story,” in Disney/Lucasfilm’s words.
So that’s a pretty good argument for the power of not just iconic brands, but iconic intellectual property. Another one of those cropped up this month, via Pokémon Go — while you’ve read about the game’s innovative use of augmented reality, what really makes it work is its use of a beloved franchise.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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