Disney Is Protecting the 'Star Wars' Set With Drones

The modern world is full of modern idiot problems, and this one may take the cake. During the production of Star Wars: Episode VII, the Resistance base scene were filmed in a publicly owned area, leading to problems with hobbyists. Specifically, drone hobbyists — the kind who also published their footage online. For a property as secretive as Star Wars, this was a pretty big issue with no clear solution.

Now that production has begun in Croatia, the team there has dropped a little over $4 million dollars in security measures, according to a Croatian Star Wars fan site. What’s that money go toward? 600 security guards, and anti-drone measures.

Anti-drone measures.

Thanks to Google Translate, we’ve got some information right here:

“In addition to considering Dubrovnik, there is a special team with drones that will remove the uninvited drones that no recording would not be made public so that even those air. We do not know whether they have a Star Wars X drones wing tags or something like that, but it would be cool.”

We here at Inverse do love to talk about both drones and Star Wars, so this is an excellent mid-point of our Venn diagram. We’d be remiss not to include some discussion about the potential for using trained eagles for a war on illegal drones. Why didn’t Disney think of that?

Still, is this an over-reaction? These shots are all exteriors and when you get down to it, what is at risk here? Would Empire have been ruined if you’d seen some dudes playing in the snow of wherever they shot Hoth? The footage from the drones on the last film’s set leaked and revealed absolutely nothing. If anything, Star Wars isn’t huge on practical effects, so it seems hard to leak anything that the 600 security guards couldn’t prevent.

There’s also a crazy dude’s attempt to make every Star Wars ship into a drone, as chronicled here, so give that a read. I wish they’d use these to patrol, and so does Croatia!