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When a film is due for release, opportunities to promote the film and further the films profits begin to present themselves. One saga that knows this better than anyone is Star Wars. After the release of the first Star Wars film in 1977, LucasFilm realised that due to the sheer popularity of the film and the passion that audiences across the globe had shown for the film that there was every reason to make some of the films stand-out characters and villains into figurines and other forms of merchandise such as clothing. Between 1978 and 1985, toy manufacturer Kenner was able to sell around 3,850,000,000 Star Wars toys whilst their competitor Hasbro, between 1995 and 2011, was able to sell a humbling 5,537,000,000 toys showing just how much of a profitable move this was for LucasFilm.

However it is important not to overlook the profitibality of the primary form, which is the film release itself. All in all, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has made $2.068 billion in revenue, making it one of the most profitable films of all time. However it doesn’t end there, a few months after the film’s cinema release, it was then relased on blu-ray and DVD.  This meant that millions of copies of the film could then be sold worldwide after people has seen it in cinemas so that people can watch however many times they want, when they want. This would have made Disney millions once again as a large portion of people who had already seen the film will have been prepared to purchase the film on blu-ray/DVD just so that they could watch it again.

A recent example of promotion on Star Wars’ behalf was the release of Star Wars Battlefront on the 17^th November 2015. The game was released around a month before the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and this was no coincidence. The release of Star Wars: Battlefront not only got people extremely hyped for the release of the new Star Wars film and helped increase its public awareness, but it also massively boosted Disney’s profits from the saga (which they bought from LucasFilm in 2012). Star Wars Battlefront went on to sell 12 million copies worldwide and made Disney a gross profit of around $660 million despite receiving mixed reviews from game critics and the gaming community.

Although Star Wars action figures, clothing and video games have undoubtedly been the saga’s most popular forms of merchandise, there are many other forms of Star Wars merchandise you can find dotted all around stores today. Examples of these would be phone cases, board games, mugs, bedsheets/pillow cases, laptop covers, pens and pencils and virtually anything else in which a Star Wars logo can be slapped on. With all merchandise sales combined, it is fair to say that the merchandise sales alone have made LucasFilm and Disney more profit than any of the actual Star Wars films themselves have been able to generate over the past few decades, which in retrospect is staggering considering the sheer scale of Star Wars films especially in the 21^st century.