“Star Wars” creator George Lucas has compared Disney, which purchased his signature franchise for $4 billion, to “white slavers.”
Lucas made the comments during an interview with Charlie Rose that aired on Christmas, but is receiving attention a few weeks after the franchise’s newest installment, “The Force Awakens,” has taken the movie industry by storm.
“These are my kids,” Lucas said of the franchise. “I loved them, I created them. I’m very intimately involved with them.”
When pressed about why he sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, Lucas said, “I sold them to the white slavers that take these things and …” He trailed off laughing before completing the sentence.
Lucas sold his company and the rights to the “Star Wars” franchise to Disney in a deal valued at $4 billion. He received 40 million Disney shares from the deal, which, at the time of the sale in October 2012, made Lucas “the second largest non-institutional shareholder of Disney,” only behind the trust of the late Steve Jobs, according to a USA Today report.
He had no involvement with “The Force Awakens,” citing creative differences with Disney that ultimately led to the two agreeing that it was best for Lucas to step away from the project.
“They looked at the stories, and they said, ‘We want to make something for the fans,'” Lucas told Rose. “So, I said, all I want to do is tell a story about what happened. It started here and it went there, and it’s all about generations and the issues of fathers and sons and grandfathers. … It’s a family soap opera. … It’s about family problems. It’s not about spaceships.”
He likened his disengagement from the franchise he first launched in 1977 to a breakup.
“It really does come down to a simple rule of life, which is when you break up with somebody, the first rule is no phone calls,” he said. “The second rule is you don’t go over to their house and drive by to see what they’re doing. The third one is you don’t show up at their coffee shop. … You just say, nope, gone, history, I’m moving forward. … Every time you do something like that, you’re opening the wound again.”
