Ballantine Acquires Rights to Future Star Wars Fiction and Nonfiction Titles

Posted on October 17, 1997

The Ballantine Publishing Group has just acquired rights to a sweeping program of future Star Wars fiction and nonfiction titles, it was announced today by Linda Grey, President of the Group. Ballantine, a division of Random House Inc., the world's largest English-language general trade book publisher has been publishing the best selling novelizations of the first three Star Wars films for over 20 years.

"Star Wars has become the most successful franchise in the entertainment industry," said Ms. Grey, "and we're excited to have an opportunity to play such a key role in the publishing that will accompany the new Star Wars movies. Along with our bestselling Star Wars backlist, publishing all of the new adult fiction and nonfiction well into the next millennium will introduce the magic of Star Wars to a whole new generation of readers."

The first of the three new Star Wars films has just completed the first phase of principal photography and is expected to be released in May 1999.

Under the new licensing agreement, Ballantine, through its Del Rey imprint, will publish novelizations of the three new Star Wars films, which are prequels to the original Star Wars Trilogy, Star Wars: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. In addition, they will publish all the nonfiction books based on the new trilogy of films, and spin-off novels set in the periods of both the classic films and the new prequel trilogy.