It's four billion on paper only, the majority of it is in stock. I mean, yea, he gets a massive cashout, but we're talking EVERYTHING that Lucasarts is involved in. Toys, books, movies, games, all the merch (And there is a SHIT ton of it).

He's been saying for a while he wanted to pass it off to younger filmmakers and sort of wipe his hands. It's got to be hard, he's gotten nothing but flack for his films for twenty years now. Even Revenge of the Sith got a lot more criticism than praise. I think it's a good idea, but Star Wars 7 means they are either going to A) Just toss the Expanded Universe out the window and write their own story post Return (Unlikely, due to the age of the actors), or maybe just launch off into a new time frame. I'd suspect the children of the Jedi.

Personally I'd do what Bioware did and just move FAR from the movies. I'd go ten thousand or so years in the future and tell a story then.

either way 2015 gonna be a good year.

No, half of it is in cash. The other half of the "paper only" actually has real value on the open market, which he can sell whenever he vests (or whatever his terms are).

Also...

Now I'm kinda excited.

pretty crazy. definitely wasn't expecting to read this today.

Hrm, I misread that. I mean, realistically, Lucas doesn't need that money, so it'll be interesting to see what he does with it.

Disney can do awesome things so i am really looking forward to this. Get Wacko Lucas out of it.

I read somewhere that the movies are going to be an original story and not be based on the Zahn novels. No matter what though, it will be hard to to fuck up more than episode I.

I also saw that Ender's Game is going finally be a movie and it has already been filmed (guess I was pretty slow at seeing this news, so it isn't exactly recent). Ender's Game is 1 of my favorite books of all time, if not the top. Although, I don't have much faith that the movie will be good.

Ender's Game is partially filmed, my friend is working on the CGI for it, mostly the space battle sequences at the end. He's read the script, and while he can't say much, he says that while it will look awesome, it loses almost all the introspective nature of the book. Which is, well, 95% of it.

I don't see how they could do the Zahn novels without totally recasting it. Those actors are old now, and I doubt Carrie Fisher would ever play that role again. Going with brand new stories is a great idea, I just hope they move really far in time frame from the six movies.