Did Disney Use Any Of George Lucas’ Star Wars 7 Plans?

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

George LucasA while back, George Lucas talked about how, before he sold Lucasfilm to Disney for $4 billion dollars, he had ideas for a shiny new Star Wars trilogy of his very own. He didn’t say what those were, precisely, just that he had them. These ideas were also apparently part of the deal when the House of Mouse took over—when you pony up that much cash, you get everything—and the real question is: how much inspiration did they take from Lucas’ plans? The short answer is none, though there is, of course, a little more to the story than that.

Though had an idea for a new trilogy, Lucas almost got the ball rolling on Episode VII before the sale. He said that he was considering getting the film ready to release in May of 2015 and then sell Lucasfilm—a full trilogy is something like a 10 year commitment—but the Disney offer came down the way, and how do you say no to $4 billion? In a recent interview with our lovely older sibling Cinema Blend, hyping his new animated feature Strange Magic, the subject came up. And while he didn’t reveal any specifics—that’s not really his style—Lucas did note that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is nothing like what he wrote.

He said:

The ones that I sold to Disney, they came up to the decision that they didn’t really want to do those. So they made up their own. So it’s not the ones that I originally wrote

You can check out the whole interview clip here:

Not using Lucas’ plans is an understandable move. It’s possible that someone at Disney already had ideas for more Star Wars going in, but even if that’s not the case, when a new regime takes over, in just about any situation not just movie studios, starting from scratch and bringing in their own people and concepts is standard operating procedure. And given how Lucas’ last three Star Wars movies, the much-maligned prequels, were received by many fans, it’s also understandable to want to distance yourself from what came before.

Mark Hamill once mentioned in an interview that one idea Lucas kicked around years ago, as far back as 1983, was having Luke come back and fill a kind of Obi-Wan Kenobi, wise Jedi Master role, passing the Force onto a new generation. Who knows if that was part of Lucas most recent plan, but we’ll probably never find out for sure.

We don’t know much about The Force Awakens, though a new trailer, one featuring returning cast members like Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford, will supposedly appear with Avengers: Age of Ultron on May 1. Aside from that, we probably won’t learn much before December 18.

Do you think it’s a good idea that Disney moved on from Lucas’ ideas, or do you wish they’d stuck with his game plan?

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