Bob Iger has revealed that George Lucas wasn't exactly pleased after selling Star Wars franchise LucasFilm to Disney, especially when he realized his ideas were getting binned.
The Disney CEO's memoir The Ride of a Lifetime is now out and, while the Star Wars creator didn't have much to say about the trilogy aside of promising fans that they'd enjoy The Force Awakens, he apparently felt slighted by the series taking a different path than he'd plotted.
According to Iger, Disney bought the outlines for the films but made sure to state that it wouldn't be under any obligation to follow them in the contract.
“At some point in the process [of Disney purchasing LucasFilm], George told me that he had completed outlines for three new movies," he wrote. Lucas sent three copies to people at big positions at Disney, and they decided to buy the outlines. According to Iger, "We made clear in the purchase agreement that we would not be contractually obligated to adhere to the plotlines he’d laid out."
“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 added that Lucas took little time getting upset when he found out that the plot Disney was describing to him was not what he'd written. The filmmaking icon is said to have been aware that Disney wasn't under any obligation to stick to his outlines but thought that the company buying the stories was indicative of their plans to use them.
The CEO says that he was very careful in dealings with Lucas after that, as he did not want to do or say anything that would be construed as misleading.
This is all pretty new as it pertains to the Disney side of things but it was clear that Lucas wasn't a huge fan after he referred to them as "White slavers" in a 2015 interview detailing his disappointment over the way things turned out following the sale of Star Wars to the entertainment magnates three years prior.
Source: Comic Book