ST What could George Lucas do legally if they changed his outlines?

Would it be worth paying him 400 million and doing a good story instead? Only joking.. But I do wonder how that would play out, i'm actually confident that he's written a good story for this trilogy, he spent a year rewriting his original outlines. And what with the whole Red Letter Media thing.. I'm sure that motivated him to show us what he can do.

 

I am sure that you have his number JJ. Call him and ask.

 

Part of the problem with doing "pre-quels" is you have to get things to match. That darned linear timeline! Sort of like putting an addition on your house and trying to match the level of the floor to the new part. It just doesn't want to fit sometimes. Doing sequels means they can just go. Much easier to fudge things to make them fit!

 

That would of course depend on the contract he signed with Disney and if it mentioned keeping his outlines.

 

Don't you mean, "no final say"? All they're after is the revenue.

 

I tried calling him but I get redirected to the Hamburg Fish Market administration, probably because I kept asking him about the Anakin force ghost change.

 

While it's true that they're after revenue primarily (and in Disney's case, in spades!), it would be wise for them to not start a fight with the guy who came up with the concept. He could, after all, charge they're taking too many liberties and start a PR and/or court battle. There goes EVERYone's profits!

 

George wrote some really good stuff in the Prequels & some not so good but I suspect he had a really good outline for the Sequels & Arndt started tweeking EP7 & JJ finished tweeking EP7 so I imagine the base plot comes from George..........

 

Nothing, really:

That's from the BusinessWeek article detailing the Lucasfilm sale to Disney. They brought Lucas into a lot of meetings about the new films early on to help them out with little details (“I mostly say, ‘You can’t do this. You can do that,’ ” Lucas says. “You know, ‘The cars don’t have wheels. They fly with antigravity.’ There’s a million little pieces. Or I can say, ‘He doesn’t have the power to do that, or he has to do this.’ I know all that stuff.”), but at this point the property belongs to Disney.

 

Pretty sure Lucas would have no legal recourse. That's why he was sure to put someone in place at the head of Lucas Film that he himself hand picked prior to the sale. I'm sure the fine print limits the hand that Disney can have in actual details of the story, and gives such power to Kathleen Kennedy... with Disney having Green light power only for the most part.

 

While all that may be true, you left out this part directly below what you posted in that same exact article

Disney is legally bounded to follow George's treatments.

 

I speculate that Disney absolutely has nothing in the contract that states they have to follow Lucas' story treatments.

But I'm certain they will follow them for creative reasons and because it benefits them, financially.

 

Shouldn't you be filming a movie?

 

This too, even if there isn't anything contractually holding Disney to follow the treatments by George, they likely still will follow them anyways.

 

George owns something like 2.1% of Disney and is the biggest single shareholder in the company only the Jobs foundation has bigger number of non institutional shares. Legally he can't do anything. But They will not do anything that pisses him off. In effect he still owns Star Wars more than any individual. I expect that most major decisions like inclusion/axing of characters would be run past him.

(With the sale of his company, Lucas became the second- largest non-institutional shareholder in Disney, behind the trust of late Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who sold Pixar to Disney in 2006.- Bloomberg)

Would Lucasfilm want the publicity of George saying this is not my vision and I do not approve?

 

All that says is that only certain people were allowed to read the treatments, and that's what the signed agreement was about. There's no mention of any contract or agreement that was signed saying they have to follow the outlines.

 

I disagree

Either way, Iger and co seemed to love (at least publicly lol) the treatments so them changing it shouldn't be a problem.

 

I agree. I think that was part of the deal. It seemed quite clear that Lucas only agreed to sell to Disney after they agreed to complete Lucas' 9 Episode Saga. Stand alone films are Disney's full ownership of the property.

It does depend on how the contract is worded, but I bet George but some wording in there to protect his Saga.

 

Well yeah, I agree with you that the treatments will probably be followed pretty closely, but at the end of the day, if they're not, I don't think George would really have any way to go after them legally.

 

I don't really think Lucas cares. He wrote these outlines to drive up the prize for Disney. That's about it.
Creatively, he probably considers Star Wars finished. He made his six films.

To be honest: I would believe Lucas more or less thinks of these news films as "fan films" and, in essence, that's what they are.

 

All that reads is that as part of the sale Lucas would have to write and turn over these new stories and that Disney wanted to make sure they were quality.

ACQUIRING the stories may have been a critical part of the deal but not what Disney chooses to do with them.

 

Steve Jobs was fired from the company he created. Business is business. Lucas sold the damn thing. He could easily have executive produced a new trilogy, but obviously he chose to take his distances with the saga. Besides when you sell a house, you don't tell people what to do with each room, it's their house now. You know, they're gonna make a trilogy + 3 spin-offs in a decade. I'm not sure they're gonna rely heavily on George's input. They know Star Wars isn't just george's creation. Ralph McQuarrie is 30% of what made Star Wars, Ben Burtt 20%, Williams 40%, etc. He put things in motion, but SW is its own thing now. It has its own momentum. And I think it's actually better off without Lucas now.

 

So Lucas <10%? Seriously?
I've never heart anyone saying the writer and director of a certain film only had 10% input ... but, yeah, it's a Star Wars board and I shouldn't be surprised

 

Yeah, and let's not forget, Ralph, Ben, and John all performed their work off of Lucas' instructions. Without his direction the art, sound, and music isn't the same.