“No, George! We’ll be fine without you!” (Imagine that being spoken in Mickey’s squeaky voice, of course.)
On Tuesday, George Lucas continued making the promotional interview rounds for his latest movie, the digitally animated musical Strange magicwhich meant interviewers made sure to ask somewhat irrelevant questions about the next one Star Wars movie. In one of those interviews, Lucas revealed some surprising news about the upcoming film Star Wars: The Force Awakens: he had much less to do with it than his title of “creative consultant” suggests.
“The [story ideas] I sold to Disney, she [made] the decision that they didn’t really want to do those, so they came up with their own,” Lucas said in an interview with Cinema Blend. “They’re not the ones I originally wrote.”
This only adds to the list of things we know will happen not be involved in Episode VII‘s plot, which also includes the entire “expanded universe” of the series that won’t feature in the new movie (and we think that’s great news). As the Cinema Blend report pointed out, the only public statement about how a post-the-originals trilogy might play out came from Mark Hamill in a 1983 interview, saying that Luke could return as a mentor to subsequent heroes of the Force. . Indeed, we do know that Hamill and five other original cast members will appear in the new episode.
In a recent interview with USA todayLucas admitted he intended to lead the development of Episode VII and then sell the company, but Disney’s timing of the purchase offer meant he could “leave at the start of something new and just remove myself”. Sounds like Disney got him out even earlier than he expected, and the mere suggestion of Lucas’ uncoupling from the franchise was enough to get fans all excited when the sale to Disney was announced in 2012.