It’s been less than a year since Lucasfilm was bought, but it looks like their new owners at Disney may have big plans for the franchise at their theme parks.

A new report at Theme Park Insider , citing multiple sources, says that an entire Star Wars Land will be added to Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando, FL. Don’t get in line just yet – Theme Park Insider says Star Wars Land is projected to be a five-year project, meaning it wouldn’t open until 2018, though there is a possibility of that being accelerated by a year.Disney of course plans to open a new Star Wars movie every year beginning in 2015 with Episode VII, so regardless of whether it opened in 2017 or 2018, there would be a new Star Wars film to piggyback promotion onto. The Hollywood Studios park is where Star Tours already resides in Walt Disney World, so essentially, Star Wars Land would be expanding onto that. For those familiar with the park’s layout, Theme Park Insider says Disney is currently considering having Star Wars Land either replace the Muppet*Vision 3D theater and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids or, going the other direction, it could be placed where the Backlot Express restaurant and Indiana Jones stunt show currently sit.Cars Land meanwhile will probably replace the Lights, Motors, Action auto stunt show and Catastrophe Canyon, extending off of the Pixar Place area that is already part of the park.Cars Land has been a massive success for California Adventure in Anaheim, CA, giving a much-needed boost to what had been a struggling park for Disney – the lines are still formidable in Cars Land, a year after it opened. With Hollywood Studios similarly suffering from a lack of identity, the one-two punch of Cars Land and Star Wars Land would be pretty massive to say the least.

IGN Visits Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter

As Theme Park Insider notes, the competing Universal Orlando has had a lot of impressive growth Disney would love to combat, beginning with the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opening a couple of years back and plans for the near future that include the addition of Transformers: The Ride , a Simpsons-themed area opening soon and a major expansion to Harry Potter next year . Walt Disney World does have the strong addition of New Fantasyland to boast at the Magic Kingdom, but Cars Land and Star Wars Land would be even bigger, in terms of attention-getting, franchise appeal, and change the perception of the Hollywood Studios in a major way.

Going Inside Walt Disney World’s New Fantasyland

Of course, with word of such a major investment of Star Wars at a Disney theme park comes the question… what about Marvel? Disney’s owned Marvel a lot longer, but there hasn’t been any major US theme park presence at the Disney parks as yet. Keep in mind that Disney can’t do anything with Marvel in Orlando or anywhere on the east coast, thanks to pre-existing deals with Universal. But as for the original Disneyland, in California, there was the first step of adding the Iron Man armor display this summer and there continue to be rumors about bigger plans, even while an entire Marvel area is planned for Disneyland Hong Kong

Visiting Disneyland’s Iron Man Tech Exhibit

This seems as good a place as any to throw in a funny personal anecdote. Last week, I was being helped at the Apple Store Genius Bar by a guy who turned out to be a fellow Disney park aficionado. He told me he’d heard they were going to tear down the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage ride at Disneyland and replace it with an Iron Man ride. I’m not finding any info online about such a thing in the works, rumor or otherwise, so there's nothing to back up what he said. But if it ends up being true, then damn, the Genius Bar guy knew what he was talking about!