Disney announces the purchase of Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4,000,000,000, simultaneously announcing that work will commence on Star Wars Episode VII for a 2015 release. George Lucas, having already stepped down as Lucasfilm chairman earlier in the year, is suddenly even more of a billionaire than he already was, and Disney gets the keys to the Star Wars franchise with plans for new movies “every 2-3 years.”

The fourth episode of Arrow, a modern-day reboot of DC Comics’ Green Arrow superhero starring Stephen Amell, airs on the CW. Susanna Thompson (Star Trek: Voyager) guest stars.
The first segment of the movie Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, a prequel to Ronald D. Moore’s re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica, premieres online at Machinima.com. Broken into ten segments, it is intended to pilot a series chronicling the early military career of William Adama, though after a 2013 airing on Syfy, no series is ordered.
Word breaks across Hollywood that Disney has secured the services of J.J. Abrams, co-creator of Lost and director of the 2009 and 2013 movies set in a re-imagined Star Trek universe, to direct the much-anticipated Star Wars Episode VII, the first new movie in the series since Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm at the end of 2012. With a locked-in release date in 2015, Abrams is expected to start work on Episode VII as soon as post-production and promotion for Star Trek Into Darkness are complete for that movie’s May 2013 release.
Disney announces that it has an entire empire of Star Wars movies in mind, including two movies built around the early days of specific fan-favorite characters, with Han Solo and Boba Fett being the first two characters to have movies centered around them. The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders Of The Lost Ark screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan – obviously no stranger to the exploits of Han Solo – is among those developing the storylines for these spinoff movies.