Disney and Star Wars -- Who owns what characters now?
Disney’s kabillion-dollar acquisition of Lucasfilm is a pop culture mega-merger, combining one of the most beloved companies in the post-industrial world with one of the largest multimedia fictional universes of the modern age. It’s almost unprecedented…except that Disney did the same thing a few years ago, when it purchased Marvel Entertainment, thus beginning the long march to the outrageously popular The Avengers. In a Hollywood landscape which depends on pre-existing brands, the rights to pretty much every famous character or franchise have spread throughout Hollywood. In an effort to help you keep track of who owns what, here’s a list of all the major studios and the properties they control:
READ MORE: EW’s full coverage of the Disney-Lucasfilm deal
Disney:
Star Wars
Various Marvel characters (With a few exceptions: See Sony and Fox.)
Every Pixar creation
The Muppets
Winnie the Pooh
Sony:
Spider-Man (woo-hoo!)
Ghost Rider [Sad trombone]
Warner Bros.
All DC Comics characters
All Looney Tunes characters
Universal:
All the Universal Monsters, including The Mummy and The Wolfman (Although they don’t own the concept of “mummies” and “werewolves” — just the specific way those characters were represented in the original Universal monster movies.)
Jason Bourne
Twentieth Century Fox:
X-Men and various X-related Marvel characters (including Deadpool)
Planet of the Apes
Fantastic Four
The Aliens/Prometheus franchise
MGM:
The Hobbit
James Bond
Robocop
Paramount:
Transformers and GI Joe (via a deal with Hasbro)
Star Trek
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