Star Wars: Episode 7 - Page 19

Fantastic Article About How Disney Bought LucasFilm
And the conditions and terms that came with it; How much influence George Lucas retains. Episode 7-9 Story Outlines Already Provided Before Sale.

Some highlights that stuck out to me:

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-- As it turned out, Lucas had already done the cataloging. His company maintained a database called the Holocron, named after a crystal cube powered by the Force. The real-world Holocron lists 17,000 characters in the Star Wars universe inhabiting several thousand planets over a span of more than 20,000 years. It was quite a bit for Disney to process. So Lucas also provided the company with a guide, Pablo Hidalgo. A founding member of the Star Wars Fan Boy Association, Hidalgo is now a “brand communication manager” at Lucasfilm. “The Holocron can be a little overwhelming,” says Hidalgo, who obsesses over canonical matters such as the correct spelling of Wookiee and the definitive list of individuals who met with Yoda while he was hiding in the swamps of Dagobah.

-- At 68, he was ready to retire and escape from the imaginary world he created—but he didn’t want anybody to desecrate it. “I’ve never been that much of a money guy,” Lucas says. “I’m more of a film guy, and most of the money I’ve made is in defense of trying to keep creative control of my movies.” Lucas is speaking by phone, giving a reluctant interview about the sale of Lucasfilm. He tells the familiar story about how he didn’t set out to be rich and powerful. He just wanted to make experimental movies like THX-1138, set in a futuristic world where sex is illegal, drug taking is mandatory, and brutal androids make sure people comply with the rules. Lucas had a searing experience with THX-1138. Warner Bros. took the movie out of his hands and recut it before it was released in 1971. Universal did the same thing with his next film, American Graffiti, set in his hometown of Modesto, Calif. But unlike THX-1138, American Graffiti was a hit.

-- Lucas released Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 1999. Combined, the three films in the second trilogy would gross $2.5 billion, but many fans thought they were a mess. They were particularly appalled by the bumbling Jar Jar Binks from the planet Naboo, a creature with an inexplicable Jamaican accent who became the butt of jokes on South Park and The Simpsons. The criticism got to Lucas. He found it difficult to be creative when people were calling him a jerk. “It was fine before the Internet,” he says. “But now with the Internet, it’s gotten very vicious and very personal. You just say, ‘Why do I need to do this?’ ” At the same time, Lucas was reluctant to entrust his universe to anyone else. “I think he felt like he was a prisoner of Star Wars, and that only intensified over the years,” says Dale Pollock, author of Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas.

-- Lucas and Kennedy hired screenwriter Michael Arndt, who won an Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine, to begin work on the script for Episode VII. They enlisted Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote the screenplays for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, to act as a consultant. Lucas started talking to members of the original Star Wars cast, such as Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford, about appearing in the films. In June 2012, he called Disney Chairman and CEO Robert Iger.

-- At first Lucas wouldn’t even turn over his rough sketches of the next three Star Wars films. When Disney executives asked to see them, he assured them they would be great and said they should just trust him. “Ultimately you have to say, ‘Look, I know what I’m doing. Buying my stories is part of what the deal is.’ I’ve worked at this for 40 years, and I’ve been pretty successful,” Lucas says. “I mean, I could have said, ‘Fine, well, I’ll just sell the company to somebody else.’ ”

-- Once Lucas got assurances from Disney in writing about the broad outlines of the deal, he agreed to turn over the treatments—but insisted they could only be read by Iger, Horn, and Kevin Mayer, Disney’s executive vice president for corporate strategy. “We promised,” says Iger. “We had to sign an agreement.”

-- Asked whether members of the original Star Wars cast will appear in Episode VII and if he called them before the deal closed to keep them informed, Lucas says, “We had already signed Mark and Carrie and Harrison—or we were pretty much in final stages of negotiation. So I called them to say, ‘Look, this is what’s going on.’ ” He pauses. “Maybe I’m not supposed to say that. I think they want to announce that with some big whoop-de-do, but we were negotiating with them.” Then he adds: “I won’t say whether the negotiations were successful or not.”

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Those are just a few things, but the entire article should be read, but it was far too large to quote (it's like a 5 page article on their site, but it's well worth the read to get a good scope of how this acquisition came about).

But one thing that particularly stuck out was the bit in bold. See, all you *bleep*ing nerds (not particularly here, but everywhere on the Internet I've had to listen to the same whining bullshit for over a decade and a half) are the reason itself the Prequels were a mess, because you hindered his creative control when he tried to appease all of you. Which was never going to happen, because you're all self-entitled nerds, babbling on like idiots about money being the inspiration for his decisions and believe you have an input in the way these films were made, and still continue to be made when you have no say in the matter period. Remember, people were bitching about him well before Episode I, going earlier I still remember the hate he received for the Special Editions when they were arriving in theaters. It's just ridiculous what people come up with.

• Glad he gave Disney an outline for the Sequels, so that should end that argument once and for all what "new" means.
• Glad he spoiled the original Trio's return to the franchise, since Disney have been dancing around this confirmation.

I enjoy watching the entire Saga and I can't wait for it to continue in a new trilogy and spin-offs they have planned even more after reading this article.

God, I really *bleep*ing hope that they have a good reason to putting Han, Leia and Luke in the films instead of just casting them for fanservice sake. I really don't want to see old Han Solo ffs

Is the script finished yet or is the poor bastard that writes this thing going to have to work around those three?

Really? You have MORE confidence in the new films BECAUSE Lucas is involved? As a final piece of evidence pointing towards the man's inability to properly manage his own movie franchise, I give you this photo.


In fact that's not even the one I was looking for. The one I was trying to post is just a picture of Lucas wearing a shirt. A shirt that says "Han Shot First". I'm not kidding, it's a t-shirt he was wearing during what looks like the shooting of the prequels. If you don't know how ridiculous that is, then you shouldn't be attempting to judge Lucas in the first place.

I can't see them letting him mess it up too badly. The fans have become so vocal about the problems with the movies: campy dialogue, poorly constructed plots, The Ewoks, Jar-Jar, etc, that I can't imagine they'd let Lucas slip something stupid in there.

I'd be perfectly happy with the tone being similar to The Avengers. That was a Grade-A Blockbuster that still managed to be relatively family friendly. Although a slightly darker tone for SW would be nice, but that's probably just because I'm an adult. Abrams did well with Star Trek too, again just as far as the tone of the movie went. Funny and overall light-hearted, but it still had some dark moments and wasn't afraid to impress the fact that billions of people died to the audience.

I love, nay, adore that second poster Star of Spurs - reminds me a bit of TDKR poster with the broken batmask.

I'm excited - I enjoyed all 6 movies in their on ways so I'm keen to see what is next :>!

The poster should just be a really big "VII". I mean, how bad-ass would that be?

quote tyranitar24

HaloAddict Pretty obvious that you take Star Wars a lot more serious than I do. I enjoy the films for what they are, and I respect Lucas for even creating such a vast universe in the first place. Maybe he has made some questionable choices in certain films, but that never really stopped me from enjoying the movies and/or believing that Lucas knew what he was doing. It is his universe after all.

Wait, are you implying that George Lucas isn't the worst man to ever have lived?

That a creator can do as he pleases with his work?

That the prequels really weren't the worst atrocities to ever hit film?

NEVER

I like Twilight.