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.”
So you like the movie that vomit-birthed the pox of JarJar on the universe. the character lucas described as his favorite.
Yeah.
I liked “Rogue One” better back when it was called “The Dirty Dozen”.
Lucas can still rest on his laurels for HOWARD THE DUCK.
p-u!
Walt Disney was involved with Freemasonry. He knew.
He sold it. They bought it. End of story.
George came from an era of lefty filmmaker that was smart enough to leave their left wing tripe off the screen and/or the cutting room floor. He sold to a group that had no such scruples. Story telling to them takes a backseat to pushing an agenda.
Saw the new movies and yes, they were trash. The new one is an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle on a bad story that served an agenda. As a result one was left leaving the theatre wondering, “did I really need to see any other Star Wars movie in order to watch that?” It was like a story de novo.
The other movies were fun. This was just painful. It was the equivalent of a Sci-Fi channel popcorn flick with cameos.
as bad as Lucas can be, I would be very interested in hearing about his original vision.
LOL! Ewoks and “E-wokes” have done more damage to Star Wars than Jar-Jar Binx and an army of Gungans ever could.
He’s been noodling on those sequels for nearly a decade. How are those coming along?
Re: Lucas working with robots instead of actors.
Yes, his directing skills are not his strong suit. But he can create a story and be consistent with it. Kathleen Kennedy?!? She is just an angry feminist who is in the business to rid the world of toxic masculinity. Instead, she has rid Star Wars of likability.
Translation:
Why would we want to follow a proven money making movie plan when we could re-write it so that we can feel better about ourselves..
exactly. jj was probably getting heat from exces to expand the demos!
“In Iger’s new memoir...”
It can’t be that new because this info all came out I think over six months ago.
Let's start with the Jedi going from the "good guys" to creepy people who snatch VERY young children from their families and indoctrinate them into a weird cult where there "are no absolutes" (are you absolutely sure of that) and you may not form any emotional ties to anyone outside the order.
They went from being The Knights of the Round Table to Mamelukes in one swift move.
They should have adapted the Timothy Zahn sequel books. Sure, that would have spoiled any “twist” ending, but they were pretty solid stories and a good screenwriter could have polished them off.
Disney bought the script treatments and probably buried them in a vault somewhere. Maybe someday some enterprising intern will leak them.
There has been a lot of news about this, but I haven’t seen anything about what Lucas’ outlines were. I’d be interested in comparing them to what Disney came up with, which, frankly, has been underwhelming.
Hey George, when you whore your creative “baby” out for $4 billion, you don’t really get the right to complain about how it’s treated.
Avatar was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Stupidly heavy-handed, obvious, trite... Practically unwatchable, and what, 3 hours long?
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