Over its 40-year history, the Star Wars franchise has reached more than three generations of casual and hardcore fans via films, comics, games, toys, novels, lunch boxes, and more. This book brings together essays from a wide range of interdisciplinary scholars in order to map out the emergence of complex new forms of transmedia storytelling. The collection places Star Wars at the center of those studies' projects by examining video games, novels and novelizations, comics, advertising practices, television shows, aesthetic and economic decisions, fandom, and cultural responses in their multiple contexts of production, distribution, and reception.Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling offers vital new conceptual and methodological tools for understanding the ways in which transmedia storytelling and the industrial logic of media franchising have developed in concert over the past four decades. In emphasizing that Star Wars is both a media franchise and a transmedia storyworld, the essays in this collection emphasize the complex negotiations between culture and industry that have shaped the brand and its many narrative threads. By taking this dual approach, the book focuses on the interconnected nature of corporate media production, transformative fan practices, and transmedia world-building.