Posted on 12/23/2019 10:14:23 AM PST by powermill
George Lucas “felt betrayed” by Disney‘s initial plans for the Star Wars sequel trilogy, according to Disney CEO Bob Iger.
Iger has recalled the early meetings that Disney held with the creator of the acclaimed sci-fi franchise ahead of the making of The Force Awakens, which hit cinemas in 2015 as the first part of the sequel trilogy. •Read more: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – what we know so far about the final film in the trilogy
In Iger’s new memoir The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company, he describes how Lucas felt “upset” and “betrayed” upon learning that Disney intended to “go in another direction” from Lucas’ original ideas for the sequel trilogy.
“Alan Horn [Co-Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, Walt Disney Studios] and I read George’s outlines and decided we needed to buy them, though we made clear in the purchase agreement [of Lucasfilm by Disney in 2012] that we would not be contractually obligated to adhere to the plot lines he’d laid out,” Iger writes in the memoir (via Comicbook.com).
“[Lucas] 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. 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’ ideas), but like the outlines, we would be under no obligation.”
The poster for Star Wars: the Force Awakens, which precedes Star Wars episode 8 Poster for Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Remembering an early meeting he held with Lucas, screenwriter Michael Arndt and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy at Skywalker Ranch, Iger says that “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.”
“The truth was, Kathy, [The Force Awakens writer-director] J.J. [Abrams], 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,” Iger writes.
“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…I’d been so careful since our first conversation not to mislead him in any way, and I didn’t think I had now, but I could have handled it better.”
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Iger adds that Lucas therefore “felt betrayed” in one of their first meetings about the future of Star Wars. “And while this whole process would never have been easy for him, we’d gotten off to an unnecessarily rocky start.”
LOL!
Walt Disney would be simply horrified by Disney now.
People are taking this whole thing way too seriously. It reminds me of the woman in a video magazine, when the talk was that Spielberg was going to take ET out of release for a while, said that he didn’t have the right to do that.
It is a commodity. Nothing more. Some of us get entertainment out of it, some (e.g. my wife) think it’s all stupid. It will go the way of the Bob Hope Bing Crosby “Road to” movies eventually. I like some. I don’t like others. This last one is one of my top three. Up there with episodes 4 and 5 (the first two releases) and really closed the loop well. And some of those episodes were absolute garbage. Their only redeeming quality being good special affects, which has not held me for decades.
“If you like your original story idea, you can keep your original story idea”.
This would go over a lot better if Lucas’ own prequel trilogy hadn’t been such a disaster. Maybe the Lucas sequel trilogy wouldn’t have tried so hard to cater to girls who couldn’t care less about Star Wars in the first place, but it would have just been a different kind of bad. It’s still notable that the best Star Wars movie - The Empire Strikes Back - wasn’t directed by Lucas.
George has some nerve crying “betrayal” when he sold out for $4B.
He should have stopped with the first three and it would have been legendary just right there. Everything else since then has been a disappointment and tarnished the name.
Didn’t need the lesbian kiss on the ewok planet, imo.
4 billion in cash can relieve a lot of the tarnishment..lol
That’s what selling the property means, George.
If I had known Star Wars was going to turn out like this, I would have rooted for The Empire.
I thought these latest Star Wars were too dull and p.c. to finish watching. I don’t think I missed anything special.
LOL! Star Wars as “STEM for girls” recruitment movies!
And, personally, I really liked The Phantom Menace. It’s the best of the prequels and the best SW movie after ‘Empire.
Yea, for $4 billion I’ll be on the beach sipping a Pina Colada easing my hurt feelings.
George, buddy, once you sell a thing it’s no longer yours.
Every one of them for a while now has pushed a narrative...narratives that are making our country look ridiculous.
The Empire is Obviously a take on the NAZIs yet the one stormtrooper who defects is black.
Yet again white men are no longer the main heroes, if they’re not stooges.
You don’t have to believe anything. You’re all growed up.
The kids watching it aren’t.
Wouldn’t pay a dime to see any of the new garbage.
I tried to watch Rogue 1 and it bored me to tears.
Nothing will ever top Empire. Speilburg and Kasdan jumped ship and the robots took over
The only consistently great thing about the Star Wars films—and they never get anything like the credit they deserve—are the John Williams soundtracks. After Lucas, he’s the guy that makes Star Wars “Star Wars.”
I have heard a lot of people say this, and I simply have no grasp of this concept. The original Star Wars was excellent. The "Empire Strikes Back" was merely good. Everything subsequent to it was just crap.
Why some people see "Empire Strikes Back" as the better of the two, I simply don't understand.
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