Still, after the success of Star Wars, Foster found himself a go-to person for movie novelizations. When it hit stores courtesy of Ballantine Books in 1976, few realized who had actually written the novel. Armed with Lucas’ script and concept art, he produced a 272-page book in just six weeks. Foster had already been enjoying a career as a science fiction author, selling his first story to Analog Science Fiction and Fact in 1971, and his first novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang, a year later. This included a pre-release novelization: Lucasfilm hired 29-year-old writer Alan Dean Foster to ghostwrite the book, as well as pen a sequel that could easily be spun into a second, lower-budget Star Wars film if the first underwhelmed at the box office.

With six months to go before the film would debut in theaters, Lucas’ company was hard at work licensing the property out to other companies that could produce shirts, toys, and comics that could promote the release. 12, 1976, a paperback novel called Star Wars, “written” by George Lucas, appeared on stands. Photo: Andrew Liptak book cover: Ballantine Books The legal landscape is tilted towards the corporations - and the publishers under them - making the system tough to challenge.

What I’ve learned from investigating the claims highlights the perilous position that writing for popular, existing properties poses for creators. Moreover, since Foster and SFWA went public with their claim, other authors have spoken to Polygon to say that they too haven’t been paid for work now owned by Disney after the acquisitions of Lucasfilm in 2012 and 20th Century Fox in 2019. If a publisher can get out of paying an author by having the license travel to another company, it could undermine the livelihoods of many writers who made their livings writing novelizations and tie-in novels for some of the biggest media franchises in existence. So, he had turned to SFWA for help, and the #DisneyMustPay hashtag was born.Īccording to SFWA, the incident sets troubling precedence for others in similar positions. While Disney has kept the books in print with other publishers, with Titan handling Alien and Del Rey on Star Wars, Foster says he hasn’t received royalty payments for new editions. This November, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a professional organization for genre authors, dropped a bombshell announcement that shook the science fiction community: For several years, author Alan Dean Foster had been trying, without success, to get paid for several major tie-in novels adapting movies from the Star Wars and Alien franchises.

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