Petition Created To Have Disney Release George Lucas’ Star Wars Sequel Trilogy Treatments

John F. Trent |

Mar 23, 2020

A petition has been created asking Disney to release George Lucas’ Star Wars sequel trilogy treatments.

https://youtu.be/TqO0hLBAyZI

The petition was created by Itchy Bacca.

It reads:

“When George Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney, he gave treatments for his vision of the Sequel Trilogy to Bob Iger, Alan Braverman, Alan Horn, and Kathleen Kennedy. Disney saw fit to dismiss George’s outlines and decided to go their own way instead.”

He adds:

“However, Bob Iger, Alan Braverman, Alan Horn, and Kathleen Kennedy now have a cultural responsibility to release George Lucas’ Sequel Trilogy treatments to the public. Star Wars is a cultural icon, and the public deserves to know what its creator had originally intended.”

The petition concludes:

“The undersigned call on Disney to release the George Lucas Sequel Trilogy treatments in PDF form at their earliest opportunity.”

The petition comes after former Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed in his new book, The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned From 15 Years As CEO of The Walt Disney Company, that Lucas felt betrayed by Disney after they purchased his sequel trilogy treatments and then proceeded to not use them.

Iger wrote, “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.”

As to why George felt betrayed, Iger detailed, “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.”

Iger added, “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.”

Iger did place the blame on himself for not properly letting Lucas know what Disney would do with Star Wars after purchasing it, “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 continued, “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.”

He added, “I could have talked through this with him and possibly avoided angering him by not surprising him.”

While Iger admitted he should have been better at letting Lucas know what was going to happen, he believes their choice to make a derivative The Force Awakens was the right one given the “pressure we were under to give ardent fans a film that felt quintessentially Star Wars.”

Iger explained, “Looking back with the perspective of several years and a few more Star Wars films, I believe J.J. achieved the near-impossible, creating a perfect bridge between what had been and what was to come.”

Not only did Iger admit that Lucas felt betrayed by Disney by not using his sequel trilogy treatments and then creating a derivative film in The Force Awakens, but he also attempted to get Lucas to sign a non-disparagement clause that would prevent him from criticizing Disney’s new Star Wars films.

Iger explained, “Among the last things we negotiated before the deal closed was a non-disparagement clause.”

He added, “I asked George to agree that he wouldn’t publicly criticize any of the Star Wars films we made.”

Fortunately, according to Iger, Lucas did not sign such an agreement, “When I brought it up with him, he said, “I’m going to be a big shareholder of the Walt Disney Company. Why would I disparage you or anything you do? You have to trust me.” I took him at his word.”

In fact, Lucas would actually refer to Disney as “white slavers” in an interview with Variety in 2015. Lucas stated, “I sold them to the white slavers that takes these things, and…”

Lucas also expressed his dissatisfaction with The Force Awakens after viewing the film before its global release.

Iger details, “Just prior to the global release, Kathy screened The Force Awakens for George. He didn’t hide his disappointment. “’There’s nothing new,’” he said.”

He 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.'”