Disney Didn’t Use Any of George Lucas’ Ideas for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’
When Disney bought George Lucas’ company, they got more than the buildings, computers, droids, and the ‘Star Wars’ intellectual property. They also got George Lucas’ unused ideas for future ‘Star Wars’ movies. Though Lucas had insisted for years that ‘Revenge of the Sith’ was his final ‘Star Wars’ film, that didn’t stop him from brainstorming a few other potential stories that could be set after the events of ‘Return of the Jedi’ (and, I assume, mostly involve Jar-Jar Binks wandering the universe and getting into “hilarious” misadventures).
You would think, even after the notoriously unpopular prequels, that any idea that sprang from the mind that birthed Han Solo, Boba Fett, and ‘Radioland Murders’ would be priceless. But that was not what Disney thought when they bought Lucasfilm and all of Lucas’ ‘Star Wars’ leftovers. According to Lucas himself, Disney decided not to use the concepts he provided for a potential ‘Episode VII,’ choosing instead to let director J.J. Abrams and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan create their own new spin on the galaxy far, far away for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens.’
Here’s his comment on the subject, via Cinema Blend:
The [ideas] that I sold to Disney, they came up to the decision that they didn’t really want to do those. So they made up their own. So it’s not the ones that I originally wrote [on screen in ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’]
So too bad, ‘Star Wars’ fans! If ‘The Force Awakens’ sucks, you won’t have George Lucas to kick around anymore. Instead, you’ll have to blame J.J. Abrams. I’m sure you’ll muddle through somehow.