Since being sidelined in 2012, the creator has kept an ally at the franchise’s helm in Kathleen Kennedy. But is she about to be usurped as overlord?
It was never going to be easy for George Lucas to walk away from Star Wars. There is an amusing scene in The Force Awakens in which peppy young gun Finn (John Boyega) suggests using Jedi antics to break into a First Order base, only to be told by an incredulous Han Solo: “That’s not how the Force works”. We can easily imagine a similar look of disgust from Lucas when he found out that
Disney wasn’t planning to use any of his madcap ideas for its new trilogy of films, following his sale of Lucasfilm and all rights to
Star Wars to the mouse house seven years ago.
When you create the world’s most popular fantasy saga from the ground up (with a little bit of help from Akira Kurosawa) only to see the fans turn against it and the people you sold it to bring in younger, fresher talent to take charge, it must be hard to accept. Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger reveals in his new autobiography that Lucas was kept largely in the dark about plans for 2015’s The Force Awakens and most likely imagined right up to the last minute that the studio would be using his own ideas for the film.