There’s a lot of tension going round the Star Wars fanbase these days, and while the ongoing backlash to the franchise’s Disney era can often get pretty indefensible, the conglomerate surely didn’t help matters earlier this week when they came into conflict with popular YouTube channel Star Wars Theory. Thankfully, it seems that Lucasfilm has now stepped in and brought the matter to a speedy resolution.
The recent legal dispute concerns the new Star Wars fan film Vader Episode 1: Shards of The Past, a short that explores the journey of Anakin Skywalker between the events of the Prequel and Sequel Trilogies. The video dropped last month and quickly proved a hit with fans, earning more than 7 million views in the course of a few weeks.
Before making this movie, channel owner Toos reportedly received the go-ahead from Lucasfilm, allowing him to push forward with the project under the conditions that the video wasn’t crowdfunded or monetized. But while the channel adhered to the terms, the film was recently met with a copyright strike from the Walt Disney Music Company’s publisher Warner/Chappell Music, who considered the short’s original soundtrack to be too similar to the “Imperial March” theme composed by John Williams.
From here, the company started monetizing the video for themselves, allegedly making over $80,000 in the process, and while Disney subsequently reached out to Toos, it was only to warn him against taking legal action for the situation, even threatening to have his channel taken down. Naturally, the fans weren’t too pleased with this whole state of affairs, but before the situation could go any further, Lucasfilm has reportedly convinced their associates at Disney or Warner/Chappell to have the strike lifted.
So, from the look of things, it seems that we’re already at the end of this little saga, though we can surely expect to see plenty more online drama this year as the December 20th release date for Star Wars: Episode IX looms closer.
