Over the decades, the 20th Century Fox fanfare has become synonymous with Star Wars. It’s so intrinsically part of the feel of those first six movies that some versions of the soundtracks actually include it as the first track.

That’s going to change. When Disney purchased Lucasfilm, it was pretty obvious no future Star Wars movies would have those recognizable drums and horns in front of them. So one of the first questions (literally) we asked after hearing this news is what would Lucasfilm do without that music? We now know.

Though 20th Century Fox still owns the rights to the first six films, most of the new digital releases remove the Fox logo and fanfare, going instead with a John Williams-penned riff over the Lucasfilm logo. Listen to the new Star Wars Fox fanfare below.

First up, here’s the way it originally sounded and looked:

Well, that’s out. Thanks to Jason at MakingStarWars for posting the below video on Twitter. Here’s what the fanfare sounds like now on five of the six films.

Important note: The original Star Wars, A New Hope, still has the Fox logo and fanfare in digital release but that’s the only one. A New Hope is the only film Fox has 100% rights too. The other five will revert to Disney in a few years.

Here's the new fanfare that replaces the 20th Century Fox jazz. pic.twitter.com/xz7dt16Kfy

— Jason Ward (@MakingStarWars) April 10, 2015

I think this a pretty classy way to cover the lack of Fox fanfare. You can’t go wrong with John Williams and that piece of music definitely has a similar, “Are you ready?” feeling. Once we get to new movies, it should still be interesting to see how they incorporate the Disney logo, if at all.


Considering the way Disney just lets Marvel use their own logo, I think that’s likely how they’re going to go with The Force Awakens and Rouge One. No Disney logo at all. Just the Lucasfilm logo right into “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

Does the lack of 20th Century Fox fanfare on these Star Wars films bother you? Do you think this new music works?

if this is not fake, I must say that I like it

as much as the 20th cent fanfare sounds LIKE John Williams, it wasn't Star Wars music

the new fanfare IS Star Wars, so replacing the fanfare of a HOLLYWOOD STUDIO doesn't bother me at all; in fact, what bothered me is the fact that it was included in the official SW soundtracks...

I don't think it's fake. It appears in the first second of the video to have the Amazon Instant Video loadscreen. They were just recently released digitally for the first time.

There are only 250 days left til Episode VII.

Here's some juicy rumored info about the creation of the sequel trilogy and the film itself. I deleted the ones with major spoilers but you can see the unedited post here. Be considerate before posting major rumored spoilers here, there is a high chance they are accurate and could ruin the film for some orgers.

Following Lucasfilm's sale of Star Wars to Disney in 2012, Disney hired Michael Ardnt to develop an outline to the new Star Wars trilogy. He Initially developed the stories around Lucas' original drafts, slowly but surely developing the outline for the new trilogy over a 15 month period.

The story for The Force Awakens has been finalised for almost two years. If Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and/or Harrison Ford declined to appear, the story would have remained basically the same but their roles would have filled by other characters. For example if Harrison Ford said no, ....................... would have been the character...................... for the majority of the film. If Mark Hamill said no, his role would have been filled with a ................... (there were three high profile actors on standby for this role)

When JJ signed up to direct, about 70% of episode 7's script was done. He wanted the process to move forward so he could focus on the casting, storyboarding and other pre-production, but Ardnt was overwhelmed by the tight deadlines as he tried to make a story which would make Disney, JJ and the fans happy. Not only did JJ have problems with the script being unfinished, but he was unhappy with certain aspects of the story, chief of which was the lack of presence from Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. He felt the sub-plots could be a lot more interesting and generally disagreed with Disney's viewpoint that two of the original cast should only have extended cameos. With only a few months to go until casting - JJ voiced his concerns to Kathleen Kennedy and they met with Disney. Soon after it was confirmed that JJ would take over screenwriting duties with a writer that both parties agreed on. Disney made sure that JJ could only do this under the condition that his and Kasdan's screenplay would stick by the main plot points written by Ardnt.

Ardnt, Disney, JJ and Kasdan ended up changing so much of subplot, minor characters and production style from Lucas' drafts, that he simply felt it wasn't his story anymore. So this is why he publicly declared that his stories were thrown out.

Post-production is going very well, Disney have not been intervening as much as we expected and I personally think the film will be almost as good (if not better) than Return Of The Jedi.

Crew rumours:

• JJ dislikes the prequels and unintentionally ruffled Lucas' feathers in the writer's room, leading to some bitterness from Lucas who stopped coming in as often
• Disney have constantly been on JJ's back in spite of his creative control, there have been some disagreements but JJ has mostly had his way with the production and his/Kasdan's story elements.
• Harrison Ford was intoxicated when he was injured on-set, he could not claim insurance as a result, Kathleen Kennedy had words with him when he returned to set
• Mark Hamill knocked it out of the park. He will definitely be a lot more present in episode VIII
• huge spoiler deleted by Hudson
• Carrie Fisher had some issues on set which resulted in some of budget going to waste due to cancellations, Disney are looking to reduce her role wherever possible from now on.

[Edited 4/11/15 6:23am]

I just want Star Wars 1977 in it's original form on blu-ray. The 20th Century logo is engrained as part of the Star Wars experience for me, but so are the 70's era cinema logos that happened before it, like this:

.

For me and my childhood friends, even that is part of Star Wars (1977)!

But I can't wait to see what they cook up for this new movie. Based on JJ Abrams Star Trek movies and Super-8, I have a bad feeling about it.