Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion creator Ron Gilbert has expressed interest in purchasing the two IPs from Disney. Via Twitter, the accomplished designer said he is willing to pay the entertainment giant to secure the rights to both properties. To support his stance, Gilbert mentions how Disney recently announced that it has no further plans to publish any more video games. Here’s what he had to say:
Dear @Disney, now that you're not making games, please sell me my Monkey Island and Mansion Mansion IP. I'll pay real actual money for them.
— Ronbrush (@grumpygamer) May 23, 2016
I remember Maniac Mansion; don’t think that I ever finished it, though.
Disney can be greedy and selfish, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up not selling the IP’s back or ask for too much money.
Fat chance. They’ll keep them hostage until they decide to license another entry.
but why tweet that…
He’s probably hoping people would publicly support him; that way, it would look bad for Disney to deny what he wants if he gets enough support.
The NES version of Maniac Mansion is one of my all-time favorite titles! Lots of problem-solving. I imagine modern gamers getting about five minutes in before completely giving up, it offered little to no hand holding and was a gem of a release.
Disney owns Maniac Mansion? Weird. I would have never guessed that. They sure never did anything with it. It would be SO awesome to see a new Maniac Mansion game one today’s modern consoles. That’s probably my favorite non side-scrolling NES game.
when disney got their hands on lucasfilms the part of company for the games came with it disney just never did much with the games.
Is that guy hanging Yuugi Mutou upside down in that picture?
Disney may be greedy and selfish, but they have a history of putting talented, passionate and knowledgeable people in charge of their divisions – John Lasseter at Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, Kevin Feige at Marvel and Kathleen Kennedy at Lucasfilm. I’d be happy to see Disney open an active LucasArts gaming division, if they’d make Ron Gilbert and/or Tim Schaffer the division head. But, yes, if they don’t see the profit in that, let the division go, Disney. Could they actually be thinking of doing something with it instead? Why else hang on?
Despite their stated intentions?