It once seemed impossible to consider Star Wars without George Lucas’ involvement, but The Force Awakens will be the first film without him. In a new interview that aired this morning, Lucas explained where his ideas for Star Wars diverted from Disney’s ideas.
Lucas told CBS This Morning’s Charlie Rose that Disney did look at his story ideas, but ultimately decided “We want to make something for the fans.”
“People don't actually realize it's actually a soap opera and it's all about family problems - it's not about spaceships,” Lucas said. “So they decided they didn't want to use those stories, they decided they were going to do their own thing so I decided, 'fine.... I'll go my way and I let them go their way.'”
This is similar to what he told Vanity Fair earlier this week. He stressed that Star Wars is about the characters, not the technology (even though he spent an incredible amount of time on the galaxy’s technology while making the prequels, of course). Lucas also said that he hopes “the Force doesn’t get muddled into a bunch of gobbledygook.”
In his interview with Rose, Lucas compared the split with Disney to a break-up and decided that it was best to completely break from Star Wars.
Lucas did have treatments ready for the Star Wars sequels, but as Indiewire notes, Disney decided not to use any ideas from them.
Of course, unlike most break-ups, Lucas ended up with $4 billion from Disney’s deal to buy Lucasfilm.
The Force Awakens hits theaters on Dec. 18 and was directed by J.J. Abrams. It was written by Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan.