Former Star Wars assistant director and second unit director Roger Christian claims that George Lucas is returning to Star Wars and will be involved in a new live action series.
George Lucas. Photo Credit: Joi Ito from Inbamura, Japan, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Christian, who won an Academy Award for the original Star Wars film for Best Production Design, revealed in a recent interview with YouTuber Star Wars Theory that George Lucas is returning to Lucasfilm to work on a new live action series.
Christian stated, “I think he’s coming back. I’m pretty sure, now, that he’s doing a series. I think that they’re now bringing him into the fold from what I hear because there’s a Star Wars live action series coming. And I’ve got a strong suspicion that George will have something to do with that. That’s what I’m thinking. And I might be prophesying.”
“That’s what I had heard and read,” he continued. “And I don’t know from anything apart from I’m prophesizing that might happen. Because you’ve seen he’s been very physically present there. He’s been down on the sets and everything.”
George Lucas, Lucas Films award winning director/filmmaker receives an award from the Tuskegee Airman Inc. committee during the 2012 Tuskegee National Convention, Las Vegas, NV., Aug. 3, 2012. Lucas was recognized for his contributions and recent film, Red Tails, which was the first major movie created about the Tuskegee Airmen. TAI is a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring the accomplishments of the Army Air Corps African-American air, ground and operations crew members during World War II. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Colville McFee)
Christian’s comments come in the wake of George Lucas supporting The Walt Disney Company amid its proxy battle against Nelson Peltz. In the middle of March, a statement from Lucas read, “Creating magic is not for amateurs. When I sold Lucasfilm just over a decade ago. I was delighted to become a Disney shareholder because of my long-time admiration for its iconic brand and Bob Iger’s leadership.”
He continued, “When Bob recently returned to the company during a difficult time, I was relieved. No one knows Disney better. I remain a significant shareholder because I have full faith and confidence in the power of Disney and Bob’s track record of driving long-term value. I have voted all of my shares for Disney’s 12 directors and urge other shareholders to do the same.”
George Lucas via AMC+ YouTube
READ: George Lucas Backs “White Slavers” In The Walt Disney Company’s Proxy Battle Against Nelson Peltz
The statement was bizarre given Lucas’ public statements were critical of The Walt Disney Company and its handling of Star Wars after he sold the company for over $4 billion back in 2012.
For example, in an interview with Charlie Rose ahead of the release of The Force Awakens in 2015, Lucas described The Walt Disney Company and its leadership including Bob Iger as “white slavers.”
He said, “These are my kids. … All the Star Wars films. … I loved them. I created them. I’m very intimately involved in them. … I sold them to the white slavers that take these things and…”
CEO Bob Iger also noted in his memoir The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned From 15 Years As CEO of The Walt Disney Company that Lucas felt betrayed by how he and Disney went about creating their sequel trilogy.
Iger wrote, “At some point in the process, George told me that he had completed outlines for three new movies. He agreed to send us three copies of the outlines: one for me; one for Alan Braverman; and one for Alan Horn, who’d just been hired to run our studio. Alan Horn and I read George’s outlines and decided we needed to buy them, though we made clear in the purchase agreement that we would not be contractually obligated to adhere to the plot lines he’d laid out.”
Iger added, “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’s ideas), but like the outlines, we would be under no obligation.”
Bob Iger attend the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Premiere at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood CA on Thursday, April 27, 2023.
(Photo: Alex J. Berliner/ABImages)
READ: Disney Allegedly Selling Off Parts of Closed Star Wars Hotel Experience
Next, Iger shared, “Early on, Kathy brought J.J. and Michael Arndt up to Northern California to meet with George at his ranch and talk about their ideas for the film. 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.”
He went on to admit they had no intention of ever using Lucas’ outlines, “The truth was, Kathy, J.J., Alan, and I had discussed the direction in which the saga should go, and we all agreed that it wasn’t what George had outlined. George knew we weren’t contractually bound to anything, but he thought that our buying the story treatments was a tacit promise that we’d follow them, and he was disappointed that his story was being discarded.”
“I’d been so careful since our first conversation not to mislead him in any way, and I didn’t think I had now, but I could have handled it better,” Iger wrote. “I should have prepared him for the meeting with J.J. and Michael and told him about our conversations, that we felt it was better to go in another direction. I could have talked through this with him and possibly avoided angering him by not surprising him.”
He then shared that Lucas felt betrayed, “Now, in the first meeting with him about the future of Star Wars, George felt betrayed, and while this whole process would never have been easy for him, we’d gotten off to an unnecessarily rocky start.”
Daisy Ridley as Rey in The Force Awakens (2015), Lucasfilm
Iger also detailed that Lucas did not like what Disney did with The Force Awakens. He shared, “Just prior to the global release, Kathy [Kennedy] screened ‘The Force Awakens’ for George. He didn’t hide his disappointment. ‘There’s nothing new,’ he said.
The Disney CEO continued, “In each of the films in the original trilogy, it was important to him to present new worlds, new stories, new characters, and new technologies. In this one, he said, ‘There weren’t enough visual or technical leaps forward.'”
Adam Driver as Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens (2015), Lucasfilm
In 2020, Lucas made an appearance at The East Harlem School At Exodus House as part of the Virtual Speaker Series. Lucas was asked by 7th grader Jeremiah, “The world has changed so much since the first Star Wars movie, how do you think the changes in the fight for racial justice will impact the Star Wars universe going forward?”
The filmmaker responded, “I don’t know, I mean. I kind of lost control of Star Wars, so it’s going off in a different path than what I intended.”
He added, “But the first six [Star Wars films] are very much mine and my philosophy. And I think that philosophy sort of, goes beyond any particular time, because it’s based on history, it’s based on philosophy, it’s based on a lot of things.”
It’s quite possible that Lucas might have cut a deal with The Walt Disney Company to return to Star Wars and right the ship in return for his support of Bob Iger and The Walt Disney Company Board of Directors as opposed to Nelson Peltz.
What do you make of these comments from Christian regarding George Lucas returning?
like lucas will take direction from kennedy. she will slowly roast him for all those times he sent her to get coffee.