'Star Wars' Movies On TV Will Now Be Shared Between Turner Networks And Disney

'Bob's Burgers' recently restructured its rights between Warner and Disney as well to stay on Adult Swim

For as long as Disney+ stands, Star Wars probably has its streaming rights squared away. Well unless Disney becomes as visibly distressed as Warner Bros. Discovery, who’s put DC movies and Elvis on Prime Video and Dune and The Many Saints of Newark on Netflix. Its linear television rights however, have just been renegotiated.

After 7 years of being licensed exclusively to the Turner Networks now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, all 11 live-action Star Wars movies, the three trilogies and the two Stories, will now also be available on Disney’s linear networks. That includes your usual suspects of cable Freeform, FX, and FXX, but stretches to broadcast, which means viewers can probably expect the franchise on The Wonderful World of Disney going forward.

The 2016 deal, which was for the ten films after A New Hope for $250 million, expired at the end of September, so presumably just in the last week. The windows on the newer films are staggered and set to expire at different times over the next two or so years. A New Hope still had some Fox jurisdiction and was grabbed separately, an aspect unnecessary after Disney bought Fox’s assets in 2019. This new co-exclusive multi-year (exact count unspecified) deal is configured in such way that the deal for both parties expire at the same time.

The Disney Star Wars linear rights era kicks in on Saturday, October 7, on FX, airing the original trilogy back to back with the 2008 animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars film, which is presumably still Warner Bros.’s as they were the original distributor (and picked up the subsequent series for Cartoon Network with it as a stipulation). TV runs typically begin after the 18-month pay-1 window ends, amounting to about 2 years after theatrical release… in the pre-COVID, and essentially pre-Disney+ days that encompass the Starz and Netflix eras (I don’t remember what was before Starz). In fact, the reason why Phase 3 has been on TNT and TBS and not joined earlier films like The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier at FX is because those rights helped secure Star Wars streaming rights for Disney+. A second attempt to buy back the linear basic cable and companion ad-supported on-demand rights from WarnerMedia occurred in the months before Disney+’s launch.

As for whether we’ll be seeing Star Wars movies on Disney Channel or Disney XD, they’re not mentioned in the report, but it might be possible. Rogue One and the first two trilogies aired over a week from September 5 to 11 on Cartoon Network. Frankly some of the oldest stuff they aired in a while at that point. But it was still quite a sight. This does give hope that if WarnerMedia could do that, Disney should theoretically be able to do the equivalent. And while FX hasn’t aired Star Wars movies during this period, they were one of the networks included for special airings of Andor last Thanksgiving and The Mandalorian in February.

Source: Deadline