The Washington Post sends out news that will thrill sci-fi nuts everywhere. Lucasfilm tomorrow is releasing 250 video clips on their website StarWars.com to encourage fans to mash-up and play with. This very surprising news given how litigious George Lucas has been about fans "borrowing" images and video footage and using it for their own homebrew films, parodies and homages to the multi-film epic.
"We see what’s going on at YouTube," the Post quotes Jeffrey Ulin, senior director
for distribution and business affairs at Lucasfilm. "We see
what’s going on out there on the Web generally. And we wanted fans to
come to Starwars.com as the center of fan activity."
It’s a very smart move now that there will be no more "Star Wars" movies, and Lucasfilms presumably will continue to churn out merchandise, games and other branded content into the foreseeable millennia. So anything that keeps their brand before the public is good for them. And if you can get thousands of fans and mash-up artists doing all the work for you, so much the better.