Totally agree with you on this. They knew what they were doing. They knew it would off a lot of us older SW fans. They didn't care. They still made big bucks at the expense of good storytelling and they knew they would no matter what they did/are doing to the franchise.
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Star Wars Ep. 9 Thread
- Thread starter Dead2009
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Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
I find it ironic that the main complaints of the old guard fans...who have been dismissed as angry fan boys...
...where just confirmed in print by the Disney CEO
CinematicFusion
Well-Known Member
I bet Lucas can't stand Kathleen Kennedy and Micheal Iger for stabbing him in the back after giving her the keys to Lucasfilm and selling Lucasfilm to Disney. I'm sure they both promised to champion his ideas in order for Disney to get control of Lucasfilm and for Kennedy to become CEO of Lucasfilm. Lucas was already rich, he didn't need to sell, he just wanted to see his story brought to life by talented creators. Say what you want but Lucas has always written a solid story foundation. Disney even copied A New Hope beat for beat when creating The Force Awakens.
Had Disney and Kathleen Kennedy been honest with Lucas....he would have never sold to Disney...
“At some point in the process, George told me that he had completed outlines for three new movies. He agreed to send us three copies of the outlines: one for me; one for [Walt Disney Company Senior Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary] Alan Braverman; and one for [Co-Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, Walt Disney Studios] Alan Horn, who’d just been hired to run our studio,” Iger recounts. “Alan Horn and I read George’s outlines and decided we needed to buy them, though we made clear in the purchase agreement that we would not be contractually obligated to adhere to the plot lines he’d laid out.”
Iger continues: “He knew that I was going to stand firm on the question of creative control, but it wasn’t an easy thing for him to accept. And so he reluctantly agreed to be available to consult with us at our request. I promised that we would be open to his ideas (this was not a hard promise to make; of course we would be open to George Lucas’ ideas), but like the outlines, we would be under no obligation.”
Iger then details meeting with Lucas, screenwriter Michael Arndt and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy at Skywalker Ranch to “talk about their ideas for the film.”
“George immediately got upset as they began to describe the plot and it dawned on him that we weren’t using one of the stories he submitted during the negotiations,” Iger recalls.
“The truth was, Kathy, [The Force Awakens writer-director] J.J. [Abrams], Alan, and I had discussed the direction in which the saga should go, and we all agreed that it wasn’t what George had outlined. George knew we weren’t contractually bound to anything, but he thought that our buying the story treatments was a tacit promise that we’d follow them, and he was disappointed that his story was being discarded,” Iger continues. “I’d been so careful since our first conversation not to mislead him in any way, and I didn’t think I had now, but I could have handled it better. I should have prepared him for the meeting with J.J. and Michael and told him about our conversations, that we felt it was better to go in another direction. I could have talked through this with him and possibly avoided angering him by not surprising him.”
Iger then admits, “Now, in the first meeting with him about the future of Star Wars, George felt betrayed, and while this whole process would never have been easy for him, we’d gotten off to an unnecessarily rocky start.”
Had Disney and Kathleen Kennedy been honest with Lucas....he would have never sold to Disney...
“At some point in the process, George told me that he had completed outlines for three new movies. He agreed to send us three copies of the outlines: one for me; one for [Walt Disney Company Senior Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary] Alan Braverman; and one for [Co-Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, Walt Disney Studios] Alan Horn, who’d just been hired to run our studio,” Iger recounts. “Alan Horn and I read George’s outlines and decided we needed to buy them, though we made clear in the purchase agreement that we would not be contractually obligated to adhere to the plot lines he’d laid out.”
Iger continues: “He knew that I was going to stand firm on the question of creative control, but it wasn’t an easy thing for him to accept. And so he reluctantly agreed to be available to consult with us at our request. I promised that we would be open to his ideas (this was not a hard promise to make; of course we would be open to George Lucas’ ideas), but like the outlines, we would be under no obligation.”
Iger then details meeting with Lucas, screenwriter Michael Arndt and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy at Skywalker Ranch to “talk about their ideas for the film.”
“George immediately got upset as they began to describe the plot and it dawned on him that we weren’t using one of the stories he submitted during the negotiations,” Iger recalls.
“The truth was, Kathy, [The Force Awakens writer-director] J.J. [Abrams], Alan, and I had discussed the direction in which the saga should go, and we all agreed that it wasn’t what George had outlined. George knew we weren’t contractually bound to anything, but he thought that our buying the story treatments was a tacit promise that we’d follow them, and he was disappointed that his story was being discarded,” Iger continues. “I’d been so careful since our first conversation not to mislead him in any way, and I didn’t think I had now, but I could have handled it better. I should have prepared him for the meeting with J.J. and Michael and told him about our conversations, that we felt it was better to go in another direction. I could have talked through this with him and possibly avoided angering him by not surprising him.”
Iger then admits, “Now, in the first meeting with him about the future of Star Wars, George felt betrayed, and while this whole process would never have been easy for him, we’d gotten off to an unnecessarily rocky start.”
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
So the story that has been out there for years was 100% true...got it
That combined with what arndt has said pretty much seals the narrative.
CinematicFusion
Well-Known Member
I just read it today. Makes me mad. I would be so upset if I sold to a friend who stabbed me in the back.So the story that has been out there for years was 100% true...got it
That combined with what arndt has said pretty much seals the narrative.
I'm sure he has some choice words for Kathleen Kennedy when the cameras aren't on him.
Heck, even with the cameras on him he said selling to Disney was like selling his kids to slavers.
But...Lucas did it to himself, didn't need the money and trusted Iger and Kennedy to help him with his vision.
They threw his vision in the trash.
They lied to him. Would be hard for me to swallow, giving up everything I worked on.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
I have a hard time feeling sorry for George.
He was the one who went money hungry in 1980 and got mad about budgets for empire and Jedi and never let it go.
That fueled his for consumer products and insistence on cgi to “save” money in the 90’s
He never for a second needed the money.
That got us to where we are...delays on the sequels and a climate that Disney misread as “only needing” to swap traditional sets and effects for cgi. They didn’t bother with the story/characters which is what went down correctly in the late 70’s/early 80’s.
There have been several excellent documentaries and books on the making of Star Wars...it’s obvious Disney never bother to read/watch them.
It was hidden in plain site.
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CinematicFusion
Well-Known Member
I'm a huge fan. I have all the making of Star Wars books and was always a big fan of Lucas and what he did early on and his ideas for Star Wars going forward.
But still hope. The Mandalorian is very much Underworld. The story Lucas was developing in 2008. I think that is why you see Lucas more involved with that series and hanging out with Favreau and Bryce Howard while she directs episodes of the series. Iger might have seen the error in his ways and realized you need Lucas in some compacity and his ideas are pretty solid.
Favreau already has a ton to work with and I expect this series to kill.
On the work with Underworld and The Mandalorian.
Underworld:
“We’d go gather at Skywalker Ranch periodically, every couple of months,” Moore said of his work on the show, “and break stories and write scripts for this proposed series that George was interested in. And George was in the ring with us every day. And it was a fascinating, amazing experience.”
According to Moore, Lucas was very involved in process of developing a story for the TV series. This would sometimes lead to nerdy debates between Lucas and the rest of the writers.
Words like “darker”, “grittier” and “character-based” came up in other interviews. With a focus on Coruscant's wretched hive of scum and villainy, it's clear that the show was going for something very different from what had come before in the largely black and white space epics. Here there was a chance to explore morally ambiguous characters in perhaps a noir setting.
The Mandalorian:
Favreau: "I'm trying to evoke the aesthetics of not just the original trilogy but the first film. Not just the first film but the first act of the first film. What was it like on Tatooine? What was going on in that cantina? That has fascinated me since I was a child, and I love the idea of the darker, freakier side of Star Wars, the Mad Max aspect of Star Wars."
Underworld:
Stephen Scaia, who was one of the people developing stories with Lucas, said that the show included “the story of how Han met Chewie and how Lando lost the Millennium Falcon”, both of which now seem likely to appear in the feature film Solo.
Matthew Graham, “George wanted to create twenty-five scripts for a season, and then he was enjoying the process so much that he wanted to carry on and do two seasons’ worth of scripts.”
Obviously The Mandalorian will be in a different time period. Picking up after the events of Return of the Jedi but the tone and style seem to be the same.
Lucas hired an impressive array of writers to work on the scripts. The idea was that the first season would stand on its own, but beginning with the second season, specific characters would go on to get their own spinoff series. Not sure if they are sticking with this or not.
Lucas even told them that price was no object, and that they should write the screenplays as if each episode were a feature film. This open-world concept allowed the writers creative freedom to take their plots and characters wherever they wanted.
Lucas was counting on CGI technology to develop fast enough to reduce the cost of each episode from $50 million to between $2 million and $4 million. His reasoning was sound; after all, he had created most of the background, planets and creatures from the prequel trilogies using computers, so for him, the idea of filming actors within a studio wasn’t that new.
The very mature war movie Rogue One was originally pitched as an episode of Underworld by John Knoll, with Saw Guerrera being part of that story. Another Reason Lucas loved Rogue One.
Favreau on The Mandalorian being a digital set:
"Well, Lucas in general is — the bedrock that all of this is built on. He is the first person that had digital photography, he was the first person to do completely CG characters. The whole notion of not having even a print [version of the film], of having everything be 0's and 1's, was all George. Not to mention EditDroid, which turned into Avid, Pixar was spawned out of their laboratories at LucasFilm, so he is arguably the center of the Big Bang for everything that I'm doing. It's building on the shoulders of what he was able to innovate. "
The future of Star Wars is on the small screen. Very excited about The Mandalorian. Nov.12th...can't wait!
"
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Mike S
Well-Known Member
After reading this I wouldn’t be surprised if Disney only bought the outlines so George couldn’t release them himself.
CinematicFusion
Well-Known Member
Good call, they definitely didn't want it to fall in the hands of Fox.
Iger: “Rupert was crazed that we bought Lucas,” explained Iger. “They were the distributor of all of [George Lucas’] movies, and he was very disappointed in his people. ‘Why didn’t you think of this?’”
Amazing Lucas trusted Iger and Kennedy that much to accept a "Trust me" from Iger and Kennedy on using his 7-9 stories. Lucas could have used Comcast, Fox, Disney all fighting against each other.
Lucas didn't... and Iger/Kennedy stabbed him in the back because he trusted them. Wow.
Money was never the issue, Lucas was always rich after creating and owning Star Wars.
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Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
Now I have to buy/read this damn book 
The general gist of what I've read of this Iger/Lucas stuff thus far - Iger sounds about as interesting as dry Wonder bread, and absolutely cannot stand even the smallest bit of conflict.
Well, then Kathleen and Micheal better watch their own backs!!
CinematicFusion
Well-Known Member
Others know what she will do behind your back....so her reputation has been tarnished. Don’t think for a second Iger didn’t plan that.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
That’s how the narrative plays
There was definitely a lot of power brokering behind that deal. Iger finally confirmed it.
I can’t remember where...but braverman was interviewed in 2013 and said that the difficulty of the deal was “total control”...if you read between the lines...it APPEARS that Lucas attempted to retain control during the negotiations.
That provides a lot of backdrop to this meeting with Kathy Kennedy and Abrams, doesn’t it? The blowup then makes sense.
Very fair points
I think he’s poking fun at “Michael”...it’s “bob” iger
We don’t need an Eisner/Iger cylon hybrid clone
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Lucas’ story very well could have been complete garbage, but it doesn’t excuse what more and more looks like a bait and switch.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
I have to say...I’m sorta on board with Iger on this. Lucas wanted it both ways...tinker with his characters AND have unlimited money to do it.
If only the world worked that way. He had proven his ineptitude.
But the dig here is still the FAILURE of Kennedy, abrams and LFL to understand what Star Wars is to the masses and what was at stake.
This isn’t “independent filmmaking”...there is a proven formula/expectations
Making Star Wars is still the biggest enigma in Hollywood...it’s just obvious everywhere else
It also raises an interesting question. if he wanted to direct force awakens why didnt he just do it? Perhaps Disney wouldn't agree to him doing Force Awakens then selling it to them?
erasure fan1
Well-Known Member
Thats what he had said. I don't blame Disney for going in a different direction either. Unfortunately the direction they went, wasn't what anyone wanted just like no one wanted more midiclorians either. But that's what happens when you let a non creative that has zero investment in the history of the franchise run things.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
This is gonna shock you...but I couldn’t agree more...
The real bell-weather for me was how they treated Gareth Edwards...who lets face it managed to make SOME Star Wars...even if flawed.
She acted like the guy was a moron...even though her boyfriend (which I believe by the way) wrote the worst “Star Wars” movie you could imagine. Stupid on all levels.
But whatever...I’ll keep making correct predictions and Irish and kaze can patonize...it’s effective