Why Disney Is Afraid of the Old Republic

There's no source material.That's what they said. In November 2019, Kathleen Kennedy, the President of Lucasfilm, sat for an interview and explained the challenge of making Star Wars films. Her exact words: "There's no source material. We don't have comic books. We don't have 800-page novels."Let that sink in for a moment. The woman running Star Wars—the person responsible for one of the most valuable entertainment franchises on Earth—looked into a camera and claimed there was nothing to adapt. No comics. No novels. Nothing. You played KOTOR. You know this is a lie. I'm not going to explain what you already know. Instead, I'm going to do something different. I'm going to present the evidence. Exhibit by exhibit. Fact by fact. Because this isn't an explainer about Old Republic lore—it's a prosecution. And by the time we're done, you'll understand exactly why Disney is afraid of the Old Republic. Or incompetent. Possibly both. Let's begin with the inventory. And let's start earlier than you might expect. Before BioWare. Before KOTOR. Before any of the games that defined this era for most fans, the Old Republic existed in comics. Dark Horse Comics. The 1990s. This is Exhibit Zero—the foundation that proves the "no source material" claim wasn't just wrong about the games. It was wrong about decades of storytelling that predated them.