Lucasfilm

Episode 6 of Acquired examines Disney's October 2012 acquisition of Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in cash and stock, announced roughly a year after the conversations that produced it. The hosts frame the company as one of the most consequential suppliers of entertainment IP of the last half-century: Star Wars and Indiana Jones, Industrial Light & Magic, Skywalker Sound, a large video game publishing and development arm (which Disney largely outsourced to EA after the deal), an animation arm, and a licensing business.

George Lucas founded Lucasfilm in 1971 in San Rafael, California. The company's first project was American Graffiti (1973), followed by the film released in 1977 as Star Wars and now known as A New Hope. The hosts also situate Lucasfilm inside a wider family of companies that trace back to it: Pixar, which Disney had already acquired separately, and Photoshop, written by ILM employee John Knoll for a movie project during one summer and then sold to Adobe. THX, the consumer sound company, was named after Lucas's first film-school film, THX 1138.

The origin story the hosts tell is unusually concrete. In 2011, the Star Tours ride at Disney World in Florida was being revamped; Lucas flew out for the premiere of the new version and, while talking with Disney CEO Bob Iger, mentioned that he was thinking about retiring and possibly selling Lucasfilm. A little over a year later, in October 2012, Disney announced the acquisition at $4.1 billion. Lucas told interviewers he never dreamed of selling it to anyone else — one host quipping that selling to anyone else would have been hard anyway.