I've written quite a bit of Star Wars fanfic. I have enough material in my head with the same set of characters to fill out a dualogy, maybe a trilogy of full length books. For me, the world and setting is absolutely amazing and I love it. I've gotten a lot of great feedback about my characters, the story, setting, blocking, etc. It's really boosted my confidence that my writing doesn't suck like my inner fear says it does.
However, I won't bother with finishing the writing on it as I Darth Mickey will claim it if it gets popular. Don't believe me? Consider the case of the Youtube channel 'Star Wars Theory'. I'm a big fan and this guy makes me look like an absolutely clueless idiot (Not far off the mark actually). He took his passion and turned it into a screen play for a short movie. He contacted Disney, struck up a dialogue with them and they gave him the green light with some rules. The biggest of which was that: 1) He could not crowdfund the project, and B) he could not monetize it once released. He followed this rules to the letter. He ended up spending more than $120,000 of his own money to make this short (First of five). Within TWO HOURS of him posting the video on Youtube, Disney had claimed it, monetized the crap out of it and promoted it as their own. Two days and several million views later (with an untold payout to Disney), they released the video back to him and said "Hey buddy, sorry about that. It was a mistake." My ass it was. They didn't offer to not the take money or anything else. They just stole his work, passion and money to make a tidy sum.
As a side note, he hasn't learned his lesson. He's decided in the last two months to go ahead and produce another part, again with his own money. This time with at least double the budget. Hiring actors, building sets, the whole nine yards. I can only shake my head and wonder.
For this reason, I won't waste my effort (at least my main effort) on finishing out that project even though I have a deep and burning passion for it. If I did, I would want to share it far and wide, maybe even turn it into a publishing deal. A guy can dream right? So now I'm working on my own stolen ideas with an Isekai series.
*Throws two coppers on the pile*
Cheers,