George Lucas Calls Disney “White Slavers”

In an interview with Charlie Rose regarding the sale of the Star Wars franchise to Disney, George Lucas referred to the studio as “white slavers.”

Lucas on “The Force Awakens”

George Lucas recently sat down to speak with Charlie Rose in a PBS interview, discussing his decision to sell the Star Wars franchise and his opposition to making a new movie “for the fans.”

“You have to cut it off and say ‘OK, end of ballgame. I’ve gotta move on,” he said of the sale, which occurred back in 2012 for $4 billion. “These are my kids,” he said of the franchise films. “I loved them. I created them. I’m very intimately involved in them.”

When Rose asked, “And you sold them?” Lucas replied, “I sold them to the white slavers that take these things and..”

Lucas didn’t finish his sentence, but began to chuckle, perhaps knowing that he had backed himself into a verbal corner.

At the premiere of “The Force Awakens” Lucas said he liked the film, but now states that he disagreed with the idea of making a movie for the fans, and noted that Disney rejected his initial ideas for the film..

“They looked at the stories and they said, ‘We want to make something for the fans.’ So I said, ‘All I want to do is tell a story of what happened. You know, it started here and went there.” Lucas said, referring to the franchise as a “soap opera.”

“They decided they didn’t want to use those stories. They decided they were going to do their own thing. So I decided, ‘Fine, but basically I’m not going to try to…’ They weren’t that keen to have me involved anyway. If I get in there, I’m just going to cause trouble, because they’re not going to do what I want them to do. So, and I don’t have the control to do that anymore. All I would do is muck everything up. So I said, ‘OK, I will go my way, and I’ll let them go their way.'”

So the Star Wars films are…slaves? And Lucas sold them to white slavers? Meaning he’s also a white slaver? Historical metaphors are hard.

— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) December 31, 2015

In the end, Lucas said that his age played a role in the sale of the franchise.

“There are three more stories,” he said in reference to episodes VII, VIII, and IX.

“And I knew that was probably going to take… To do it right would be 10 years, and I said, ‘I’m 70. I don’t know whether I’ll be here when I’m 80.’ Every 10 years the odds get less, and I want to do these other things, so I have to make the decision on my own that it’s time for me to move on.”

Disney has already recouped over a quarter of its investment with the release of The Force Awakens, which was the fastest film to ever reach $1 billion at the box office.