Ron Gilbert Would Really Like Monkey Island Back

It has not been a good couple of years for Ron Gilbert, which is most evident by the fact that most of you probably don't know who he is. And hey, no shame in that: I had to look up his name, too. But for fans of the old guard of point-and-click adventure games, forgetting Ron Gilbert is something blasphemous. A veteran of the old LucasArts studio, and the writer/director of both Manic Mansion series AND the Tales of Monkey Island series, he's got some serious street cred.

Some street cred which has sadly gone unrepresented in recent years, as his most noticeable contributions to the modern gaming scene being designing DeathSpank and directing The Cave--you know, the game that made you realize Double-Fine Production was actually just kind of average and they'd never pull another Psychonauts again. Recently, he's looked to turn this around when he and other industry veterans managed to successfully crowdfund Thimbleweed Park, an old-fashioned point-and-click journey, raising nearly double of the $375,000 goal.

But that's not enough for ol' Gil, and now, he's reaching out to Disney via Twitter with one humble request: Let him buy the rights back to Monkey Island and Manic Mansion. Please.

See, ever since Disney bought out LucasArts and LucasFilms back in 2012, they've held the rights to those two IPs, but given the fact they're stepping away from game development (and, of course, disbanded LucasArts) it seems fairly obvious they have no plans for that intellectual property. With that in mind, Ron Gilbert tweeted the following:

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.

Real money, you say? How could they refuse?

Still. While it seems unlikely Disney is ever going to make a Manic Mansion 3, or a follow-up to Monkey Island, it's even less likely that they'd sell such valuable IP. After all, a lot of sad, sad people would pay money to see a Guybrush Threepwood and Jack Sparrow team up, and one day Disney might be desperate enough to try something that stupid.

So don't hold your breath. But hey: at least we have Thimbleweed park, right?