Alan Dean Foster was about 20 years old when George Lucas, next to a model of the Millennium Falcon in a warehouse in Southern California, met him to discuss writing the adaptation of the novel for his upcoming movie “Star Wars”.
The original contract provided for an advance payment of $ 7,500, until Mr. Lucas granted Mr. Foster a 0.5% royalty on the sales that Mr. Foster, now 74, added several times more. than the initial payment. They arrived several times a year, while the original 1977 blockbuster set box office records, and the novel he wrote sold more than a million copies.
Then, in 2012, Walt Disney Co. bought Lucasfilm Ltd. – and royalty checks stopped.
Now, Mr. Foster and other authors of the Disney-bought franchises are in a heated dispute with Hollywood’s largest empire, which they say they refuse to pay royalties for the book contracts it absorbed in the Lucasfilm deal. $ 4 billion and other acquisitions. The amount of money in the game is tiny for a Disney-sized company, but important for writers looking for it. While Disney has exploited Lucasfilm for new films that have grossed nearly $ 6 billion worldwide at the box office, these writers say the company has been slow to handle their complaints and stifled checks that rarely total a few thousands of dollars a piece.
Since Mr. Foster’s dispute was made public by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, other authors of books related to Indiana Jones’ “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” projects have presented similar stories about checking the royalty that have stopped. after Disney acquired the properties. In any case, Disney threatens to alienate an obscure but vital tentacle of the franchises, because these innovations have helped build and maintain fan loyalty. Complicated issues: The exact amount of money at stake is not known, as sales and royalties for the cards involved have fluctuated enormously over time.
A Disney spokesman said: “We are carefully considering whether royalty payments may have been lost as a result of the acquisition’s integration and will take appropriate remedial action if necessary.”
Mr. Foster, who has been well-known to Star Wars fans for a long time, says that Disney ignores the players who work every day to help build intergenerational connections with loved ones. He and his wife are both in poor health and said the royalties could be useful for medical expenses.
“I’m not Steve Spielberg. I’m not Steve King. I don’t even have a name to start with Steve,” he said.
The dispute began in the summer of 2019, when Mr. Foster’s literary agent, Vaughne Hansen, first asked Disney why he stopped receiving royalty checks for three novels he wrote about “Alien.” ”, The horror space series produced by Twentieth Century Fox, the Disney studio bought as part of a $ 71.3 billion deal in 2019.
Mr. Foster and his agent realized that the same thing had happened to his royalties for two Star Wars books after Disney bought Lucasfilm.
In response to questions about “Alien” checks, a Disney lawyer told Mr. Foster that the company had acquired the rights to these books, but not the obligations to pay royalties. But in the case of “Alien,” Ms. Hansen said, the rights to Mr. Foster’s novels were reallocated several times, without interruption of royalty checks, before Disney bought Fox.
“Disney bought a house with a mortgage. They want to continue living in the house. They don’t want to pay the mortgage,” Mr. Foster said.
The group of writers says that a similar model appeared following other Disney acquisitions. At least half a dozen writers from a range of Disney-owned properties have since said they are in the same boat, said Mary Robinette Kowal, president of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Disney has begun reviewing the “Alien” case, but there are a number of writers behind Mr. Foster waiting for a round of negotiations. In all, Ms. Hansen estimates that her client earned more than $ 50,000 in royalties just for the original Star Wars novel before the checks stopped in 2012.
If Disney agrees to calculate the missing royalties, it faces a daunting task of tracking sales spanning six years and, in Mr. Foster’s case alone, five novels published in dozens of international markets.
Donald Glut, a writer who romanced the 1980 film “The Empire Strikes Back,” and James Kahn, who adapted the third film in the original trilogy, “Return of the Jedi,” both said they lack royalty checks.
If a resolution is not reached, the writers’ association could take further action, Ms Kowal said, including including Disney on a list of editors it tells its members to avoid. The term given to such a designation: “Writer Beware.”
Write to Erich Schwartzel at [email protected]