Star Wars novelists accuse Disney of stiffing them on royalty payments

Right now, in this galaxy, a ragtag group of rebel writers face down a massive media Empire to try and get royalty payments unpaid for the last eight years.

Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, acquiring the rights to Star Wars along with many other properties. We’ve all seen what’s happened since then: Star Wars is back in business in a huge way, with five new movies already bowing in theaters, a huge hit TV show, and more new projects on the way than you can shake a bantha at.

Disney is raking in a ton of money off Star Wars right now, but if you believe the claims of authors who wrote Star Wars novels for Lucasfilm before the sale, they’re not sharing it. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America association is taking up the case of numerous authors who were getting royalty payments for their licensed works before Disney bought Lucasfilm, but the payments have since stopped.

That includes people like Alan Dean Foster, who wrote the original novelization of Star Wars at the behest of George Lucas back when he was in his 20s. Originally, the contract was for a straight $4,500, but Lucas tossed in a 0.5% royalty payments. With a million copies sold over the years, that adds up.

And it’s not just Star Wars authors; the writers have worked on a range of franchises now owned by Disney, from Indiana Jones to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Most of the missing checks don’t total more than a few thousand dollars, which doesn’t mean much to a huge company like Disney but could matter a great deal to authors being stiffed.

According to WSJ, it could be tricky to figure out exactly much money is owed since 2012, since sales and royalties for the books involved have fluctuated over time, but I bet they can puzzle it out. “We are carefully reviewing whether any royalty payments may have been missed as a result of acquisition integration and will take appropriate remedial steps if that is the case,” said a Disney representative.

Disney famously invalidated a lot of the canon set up in the Star Wars novels after it bought Lucasfilm, preferring instead to create its own mythology for the universe. But wiping out years of backstory is one thing, violating the letter of a contract another.

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h/t Deadline