Ron Gilbert who co-created Monkey Island along with Tim Shafer, has revealed that he wishes he owned the rights to the IP. The games in the Monkey Island series were quite popular and was known to provide great humour and most people remember it from their childhood.
Disney owns those rights now because they acquired Lucas Arts last week. It’s something that is a byproduct of every deal, where the IPs go into the hands of the buyer. However, Ron Gilbert is not satisfied.
“I would find it hard to believe that Disney would do anything with them, just because I think they just have a lot more important things that will make them a lot more money. Star Wars, for example, just to throw out one thing,” he told PC Gamer.
“And they’ve even said—even when they announced this thing—they said they’re really focused on mobile games. They’re just not doing PC games, they’re not doing console games, it’s just not their focus. So, I kind of don’t think they’re really going to do anything, and I think this probably wasn’t even on their radar when they bought Lucasfilm either.
He was adamant and said that Disney is not really going to use the IP and it should belong to the creators. They have already announced a new Star Wars movie which shocked a lot of people and we may even see a bunch of games if Disney is interested.
“It’s kind of sad in a way. Yeah, I wish I owned Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion, you know? The fact that Lucasfilm owned them, I guess I was kind of OK with that, right? Because I made them there. But now that they’re owned by someone else–that kind of sits weird with me. It’s like, ‘Well, if someone else is going to own Monkey Island, it should be me that owns Monkey Island.’
:My only fear with Disney is that they don’t need the money. It’s not like I could ever offer them enough money to make it worth their while for them. They just seem to be a company that hoards IP, and that kind of worries me. If it had been anyone else but Disney that bought them, I would try to go put together some money and buy them back. But because it’s Disney, maybe not. But we’ll see, you never know.”
It would have been nice if these guys owned the IP, but as they say, deal is a deal.