When is cosplay a crime?

That was the start of Aaliyah's journey as a cosplayer. She's also been Toad from Super Mario and Lt. Uhura from Star Trek. She once sewed an entire Cinderella ball gown from scratch. Let's just say Aaliyah knows her way around a hot glue gun.

But there can be a fine line between homage and intellectual property theft. And corporations like Disney and DC tend to be very protective of their creations. After all, there's billions of dollars tied up with licensing juggernauts like Star wars.

And I'm Waylon Wong. We're doing a special series this week about Hollywood Today on the show the story of how Star wars cosplayers and Lucasfilm found a kind of economic symbiosis and help set the tone for how companies relate to their superfans.

But people were cosplaying almost a century before there was a term for it. Andrew Liftak is the author of the book A history. He says people were dressing up as their favorite science fiction characters in the late 1800s. Andrew has this anecdote from 1940. Some attendees at a sci fi convention in Chicago showed up in costume and

I'm pretty sure I would have fallen for this, Darian.

Anyway, Angie says cosplay kept growing with the debut of the Star Trek TV series in the 60s and the first Star wars film in 1977.

That would be almost like a thousand bucks today.

Andrew says this anxiety started to lift somewhat in the mid-90s. That's when cosplayers started meeting with company representatives at industry or pop culture conventions. They would explain, we're not trying to steal your intellectual property. We're just fans making this stuff for ourselves.

what were like, the main questions that Lucasfilm had that they wanted you to suss out.

Steve went to bat for the 501st Legion, and over time, the fans and Lucasfilm worked out guidelines. The main rule is that the group's members could not profit from their activity. So selling a small number of stormtrooper armor kits or uniform patches to other members, that was okay. Mass producing unlicensed costumes or lightsabers, that was not okay.

And it wasn't just that the company politely tolerated the fans. Lucasfilm and later Disney, which acquired Star wars, ended up working closely with cosplayers. Members of the 501st Legion have marched as stormtroopers in the Rose parade and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. They were even hired as extras for the show the Mandalorian. They brought their own costumes.

And that's why I got Elsa to come to my birthday party. Darian.

Yeah, it's not like they called her, like, no princess who will sing at your party?

Nerd culture and fandom have gotten huge in the last couple of decades. We now have even more Star wars movies and TV shows, plus the Marvel Cinematic Universe and so many other franchises.

Something like a logo is a different story. So an insignia like, say, the Superman S would be covered by copyright or trademark law. And characters like Darth Vader also have protection. So Meredith says companies could go after cosplayers if they wanted to, but she hasn't seen this happen. Probably because companies would rather be friendly with these fans than antagonize them.

I mean, take it from she Hulk attorney at law.

Tomorrow we wrap up our movie series with a movie themed Indicators of the Week. Get your popcorn ready. This episode was produced by Angel Carreras and engineered by Jimmy Keighley. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez. Kate Concannon is our show's editor, and the indicator is a production of npr.