In October of 2012, Disney acquired Lucasfilm for a staggering $4.05 billion. Lucas got half of that in cash, and the rest in Disney stock. The Mouse’s plan was to do something with Lucas’ dormant Star Wars franchise, as the final movie in the prequel trilogy — Revenge of the Sith — bowed out back in 2005.
Three years later, in December of 2015, newly appointed Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy delivered to Disney the first film in the sequel trilogy: Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It was a global hit, earning just over $2 billion at the worldwide box office. Still, that didn’t mean Lucas was pleased.
Disney CEO Bob Iger details Lucas’ feelings of betrayal in his recently published book, The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company. He explains how, prior to the release of The Force Awakens, Kennedy gave Lucas a private screening of the movie, and he didn’t hide his displeasure. “There’s nothing new,” he said. “There weren’t enough visual or technical leaps forward.”
“We’d intentionally created a world that was visually and tonally connected to the earlier films, to not stray too far from what people loved and expected, and George was criticizing us for the very thing we were trying to do,” Iger writes.
Lucas’ complaints are pretty similar to what a lot of fans said after the movie released. Of course, those fans weren’t paid $4 billion and change beforehand. “In each of the films in the original trilogy, it was important to him to present new worlds, new stories, new characters, and new technologies,” Iger writes.
Back when Disney first alerted Lucas that it would be making a new Star Wars trilogy, Iger wanted Lucas to be involved as much as possible. “At some point in the process, George told me that he had completed outlines for three new movies,” Iger writes. “He agreed to send us three copies of the outlines: one for me; one for Alan Braverman; and one for Alan Horn, who’d just been hired to run our studio.”
"Alan Horn and I read George’s outlines and decided we needed to buy them, though we made clear in the purchase agreement that we would not be contractually obligated to adhere to the plotlines [sic] he’d laid out."
It sounds like Iger and company were impressed with Lucas’ treatments but had no intention of giving him free rein. “He knew that I was going to stand firm on the question of creative control, but it wasn’t an easy thing for him to accept,” Iger continued. “And so he reluctantly agreed to be available to consult with us at our request. I promised that we would be open to his ideas (this was not a hard promise to make; of course we would be open to George Lucas’s ideas), but like the outlines, we would be under no obligation.”
“Early on, Kathy brought J.J. and Michael Arndt up to Northern California to meet with George at his ranch and talk about their ideas for the film,” writes Iger. “George immediately got upset as they began to describe the plot and it dawned on him that we weren’t using one of the stories he submitted during the negotiations.” Well, I bet that was an awkward dinner.
Kylo Ren, the Knights of Ren and the Sith Troopers are prominently featured on the cover of the latest issue of STAR WARS INSIDER magazine! pic.twitter.com/cnDv02JTi0
— Star Wars - The Direct (@StarWars_Direct) September 20, 2019
Anyway, despite Lucas’ reservations, some of his core ideas did make their way into the sequel trilogy. The character of Kira, a female Jedi Padawan, became Rey. Luke Skywalker became a hermit on a planet no one could find, and the idea of a “Jedi Killer” character became Kylo Ren. Still, that wasn’t enough for either side.
"The truth was, Kathy, J.J., Alan, and I had discussed the direction in which the saga should go, and we all agreed that it wasn’t what George had outlined. George knew we weren’t contractually bound to anything, but he thought that our buying the story treatments was a tacit promise that we’d follow them, and he was disappointed that his story was being discarded."
Iger doesn’t feel that he misled Lucas in any way, but does admit that he could have handled the situation better. “I should have prepared him for the meeting with J.J. and Michael and told him about our conversations, that we felt it was better to go in another direction,” he said. “I could have talked through this with him and possibly avoided angering him by not surprising him.”
"Now, in the first meeting with him about the future of Star Wars, George felt betrayed, and while this whole process would never have been easy for him, we’d gotten off to an unnecessarily rocky start."
Despite their troubles, Iger and Kennedy wanted Lucas to be on the red carpet at the premiere of Episode VII, but that too proved a prickly situation. “Even though he had issues with the film, I thought it was important for George to be at The Force Awakens premiere,” Iger said. “He didn’t want to come at first, but Kathy , with the help of George’s now-wife, Mellody Hobson, convinced him it was the right thing to do.”
RELATED PRODUCT
Star Wars Mug, Lightsabers Appear With Heat (12 oz)
Buy Now!
Buy Now!
There was just one thing left to do after Lucas agreed to attend the premiere. “I asked George to agree that he wouldn’t publicly criticize any of the Star Wars films we made, Iger writes. “When I brought it up with him, he said, ‘I’m going to be a big shareholder of the Walt Disney Company. Why would I disparage you or anything you do? You have to trust me.'”
And then Lucas called Disney “white slavers” on Charlie Rose.
Iger probably shouldn’t have taken Lucas at his word. You can pick up Bob Iger’s book on Amazon right now.
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.
Watch Game of Thrones for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels