Everybody is looking to create the next Marvel cash cow. Never mind the fact that Marvel is the cinematic equivalent of McDonalds - long on the promise of a delicious meal and short on achieving it.
The goal is to create a living, breathing fictional backdrop onto which endless narrative threads can be projected spread across multiple media platforms (cinema, television, gaming etc.) with Disney taking it's percentage out of each narrative thread.
With its rich and textured mythos initially created by Lucas and subsequently built upon by numerous authors and screenplay writers over the last three decades Star Wars was always the better bet for achieving this goal. Admittedly, Marvel has its own hefty canon - but there are certain limitations inherent to the comic-book genre which, IMO, make the task of creating an equally immersive stand-alone universe that much harder.
We live in surreal times whereupon history and fiction blur together and even exchange places. Leaving aside the thorny question of whether all history should be considered fiction - there exists today a great number of people who are better acquainted with the fictional details of Star Wars' history than actual human history.
Similarly, there are people who are more familiar with the flora, fauna and landscapes of Tolkien's Middle Earth than those surrounding them in "real life".
Where it all leads I'm not sure. With the arrival of emerging VR technologies such as Oculus Rift I think these fictional universes are going to become increasingly immersive and therefore increasingly tempting for folk to disappear into. Maybe the creators of the TV sci-fi comedy, Red Dwarf, had it right when it coined the phrase "Better Than Life". Although I wonder whether they figured Red Dwarf itself could spawn such a fictional reality?
