Well Disney and Lucasfilm are paying a group of people to keep the continuity consistant and keeping it so things don't go crazy. If some Hollywood elite does want to do a crazy movie, those paid people are their to keep Star Wars as being Star Wars. If the idea is too out there, then I imagine it gets turned down, or negotiated into something that fits. It could be something simple as a name change, or a change it when something happens, but they like things to be within the frame of all Disney era Star Wars (multi-media is everything now. Multiple products, multiple money.) Unlike Marvel that can do and has done seperate media works side by side for ages, Star Wars has mostly be marketed as being one Universe. Its fanbase (which includes a lot of employees at Lucasfilm) know that and seem to enjoy that. The larger question would be, what possible Hollywood elite, at this point in time, could come up with a Star Wars idea out there enough to get Disney to just go with it? Who is bigger than Star Wars? Who could possibly have more draw than having that title on the big screen? And would any of them even try such a thing? Most that I can think of that would want to get involved are already fans of the older films and would rather play in the universe than make more waves than Disney. Especially since they now have a specific framework for what is Star Wars canon.
The only name I can think of is James Cameron. Both Titanic and Avatar made absurd amounts of money, even by mega-blockbuster standards. (In adjusted dollars, each made roughly twice as much as The Avengers.) No one else seems to have personal box office clout that even approaches that of Star Wars. Maybe if J. K. Rowling wanted to write one?
Who says it has to be crazy? Just because it contradicts a novel or comic book doesn't automatically make a movie crazy, and if that's the kind of thinking that's going on at Disney they really are far gone. And I can easily imagine plenty of Hollywood elite who wouldn't want to play ball with this. Abrams himself, despite Bad Robot's attempts to try to keep the nu Trek comics consistent, went ahead and blatantly contradicted them at every turn in STID. Granted, with Episode VII he had no tie-in material to stay consistent with, but if they bring him back to do another movie, he'll ignore the tie-ins as he sees fit, and being the guy who essentially launched modern-day Star Wars is going to guarantee him carte blanche with Disney execs. Also, it's rumoured Disney approached Doctor Who exec Steven Moffat about writing a Star Wars movie, and if he did, he definitely wouldn't care about being consistent with tie-ins, and indeed he has cut down on the amount of coordination that existed between show and tie-in material back in RTD's days. Although, I suppose he doesn't really have the clout to say no to Disney and keep a job woth them. Although I suppose, Disney can be ridiculously stubborn on these matters, as indicated by sacking Edgar Wright just because he didn't want Ant-Man to be joined at the hip to the greater MCU.
Disney has seen the immense value of integrated media properties. Its readily apparent that they purchased Star Wars with the goal of creating a large, fully integrated media property. Wormhole, I think you are thinking of the concept of a unified story in the wrong light. It doesn't limit story telling, in fact it can even enhance it. In addition, it's not like authors and directors are lining up and getting pre-made story outlines and scripts from Disney, it is just that details, including technical details in the new novels, comics, and films are going to match. I can't imagine a big name director turning away from a Star Wars project because he couldn't have the Death Star being built over Naboo, or change Greedo from a Rodian to a Grodian.
Thing is, this whole unified approach with tie-ins being canon has been tried before, and has always ended in failure. Some of Sci-Fi's more infamous examples include Babylon 5 and yes, the Star Wars Expanded Universe of old. The EU did fine when it started and there were no new official productions, but once the Prequel came out, the whole thing became one unstable house of cards and led to the whole idiotic "tiers of canon" thing. Likewise, with B5 the whole thing was determined to be leading to too many unnecessary headaches and abandoned. The fact that Disney thinks they can succeed where others, including their own predecessors, have failed is at best arrogance, at worst delusional.
The Star Wars EU was never canon, nor was there ever a concerted attempt to make any non-film Star Wars production consistent with any other non-film Star Wars production. Hell Lucas rearranged the details of HIS OWN FILMS when he made the Special Edition versions of the OT.
It's modern day revisionism claiming the EU was never canon. Back in the 1990s it was Star Wars canon. Star Wars reference books such as the encyclopaedias and so on included stuff from the EU alongside stuff from the actual movies. Not to mention stuff introduced in the EU that was brought into or at least mentioned in the prequels, like Coruscant or Quinlan Vos or whatever.
The idea that the writers and directors of a $200 million film that takes years to plan and make will have to conform to details provided by a hack writer knocking out a comic in a month read by maybe 40,000 people seems extremely dubious to me.
Not to belabor the point, but "canon" in Star Wars was (until recently) was whatever George Lucas decided to use or decided to change. He was the sole arbiter of canon, and he could change things at his whim. Examples include the Mandalorians, Coruscant, and on and on. Star Wars reference books were not considered definitive, and were discarded and disregarded by any author or creator who had no interest in research or simply didn't like an idea. Star Wars is a great example of a giant entertainment franchise that was incredibly fluid. Reams of paper and gajillions of electrons have been used by fans of the franchise to identify and "fix" internal inconsistencies and "canon issues". The fact that "Han shot first" is a rather popular meme gives you some idea of how flexible the Star Wars story has been over the past three decades. Disney is breaking new ground by enforcing order on the various stories and attempting to make them internally consistent. That is, in my opinion, a positive development. JoeZhang - the concept is that minor details are checked for consistency. Again we are talking about single lines of dialog, computer generated graphic screens, small stuff that won't impact stories. No director is going to decide to re-invent Luke's mother, so the idea that big story concepts will be impacted because now the Death Star was built over Geonosis is inaccurate.
As I am not employed by Disney nor work with the Lucas Story Group, I cannot make a definitive statement. Time will tell the level of control the Story Group has on details, and for now any errors since the Disney takeover have been almost nonexistent, and most can be attributed to fans considering the old EU as canon.
Which has more to do with it being less than a year since novels and comics have been released under Disney and there new movies have not yet bee released. If there are still no errors or inconsistencies two years from now, that will be impressive bordering on impossible.
This is where I'm at. It makes no sense that a plot point in a comic or novel read by an audience the fraction of the size of that that will see the movies will hold up or change a production. Heck, the first six films aren't internally consistent and they had one person in charge of it all.
How is correcting a minor detail in a film going to "holding up production"? Literally thousands of people work on these large projects, and I can't imagine it would be all that difficult for some post-production assistant's assistant to flip through the film checking computer graphic screens, recorded dialog, etc. for small corrections or for someone one the set during filming quickly glancing through the dailies for little things that need to be corrected. I imagine the process would work in layers with the most scrutiny being focused on the script or the story outline of a novel/comic. Why would anyone be upset because Actor B has to say "use the spring loaded widget" when the script originally had him say "use the gasket widget"? Story changes and revisions happen all the time on a normal set anyway, even when the creative team isn't working with an established franchise. This is no different.
"Sorry, James Cameron. The big opening set piece you've written with the X-Wings underwater simply cannot happen because we said they couldn't operate underwater in the comic Bail Antilles #26."
I imagine that your hypothetical scenario could be handled in many ways without driving off the hypothetical James Cameron. The easiest would be to add a line "Activate aqua shielding" and then a little fuzzy halo around the already CGI ships in post production. Than the assistant's assistant to the assistant assistant director bangs up a little two paragraph entry on "aqua shielding" in the Disneypedia.
We could just let the director make his movie and allow the fans who care make the contradictions fit. The way its been for decades. That is one of the incredibly fun things about being a Star Trek fan. Making seemingly contradictory material fit together. For me, and me only, it seems like Disney's plan sucks much of the fun and imagination out of being a fan.