Disney Allowed to ‘Resurrect’ Dead Actor
18th December 2025
Disney had the right to “resurrect” Peter Cushing in a Star Wars film, judges have ruled.
Don’t mess with The Mouse. He has way more money than you do.
The actor, who played imperial commander Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope in 1977, died in 1994, but the character was recreated in the spin-off using special effects.
The executors of Cushing’s estate agreed to his likeness being recreated for the 2016 film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in a deal with Lunac Heavy Industries.
But in 2019 Tyburn Film Productions initiated legal proceedings against Lucasfilm, the studio behind the original Star Wars saga, and ?fellow Disney ?subsidiary Lunak, alleging “unjust enrichment” from the use of Cushing’s image in Rogue One without its consent.