Star Wars creator George Lucas has admitted his ideas for a new trilogy of films were ignored by studio Disney after he sold all rights to the long-running space opera saga in October 2012.
The film-maker told USA Today last week that he planned to shoot the seventh movie in the long-running space opera saga - since retooled by JJ Abrams as Star Wars: The Force Awakens - and release it in May this year.
He also provided treatments for three new films. But in a new interview with Cinema Blend Lucas revealed that none of his ideas made the final screenplay for Abrams’ debut turn in the director’s chair.
“The ones that I sold to Disney, they came up to the decision that they didn’t really want to do those,” said Lucas. “So they made up their own. So it’s not the ones that I originally wrote [on screen in Star Wars: The Force Awakens].”
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015...s-films-disney
I am not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I'm sure we'll be getting a lot of fans shouting "Praise Jesus!" or suitable alternate icon from the rooftops, and Disney and Abrams are certainly within their rights to go their own way, but I feel like at least with the new trilogy they should have remained relatively true to Lucas' basic vision rather than throwing it all out, just for the sake of maintaining some kind of continuity of authorship (Lucas had lots of collaborators, but he always put his "stamp" on each film and provided the broad strokes and overall guidance). They have plenty of spinoff features where they can go entirely their own direction, so it would have been nice to see them remain at least partially true to Lucas' creative input for the main trilogy entries. Lucas' fault is not his creativity, it's in having too many Yes Men around who are unwilling to call him on his worst impulses. Disney and Abrams could have done that without eliminating all his contributions to the story.
Oh well. It's no premature knock on the quality or lack thereof of the upcoming films, which could still be great. It's just kind of sad in a way to see Lucas' contributions being completely set aside here. Granted, he's been compensated handsomely and it's entirely Disney's prerogative, but it feels like the end of an era and kind of sad note for it to end on.