George Lucas was famously edged out of the production of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, after he sold his LucasFilm firm to Disney in 2012.
Though Lucas provided some potential storylines and direction for the reboot, working as a creative consultant early on in production, director J.J. Abrams and producer Kathleen Kennedy went in their own direction with the finished product.
But according to the new memoir by Disney boss Bob Iger, the producer was bitterly disappointed with the result, which he believed simply re-jigged the story from his first Star Wars film, A New Hope.
“Early on, Kathy [Kennedy] brought J.J. [Abrams] and Michael Arndt up to Northern California to meet with George at his ranch and talk about their ideas for the film,” Iger writes in The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned From 15 Years As CEO Of The Walt Disney Company.
“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”.
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