Later this week LucasFilm will be releasing The Last Jedi, the newest film in the Star
Wars saga, with many more films planned for the years ahead. For better or for worse.
This wouldn’t have been possible without George Lucas choosing to sell his company to Disney.
So today I want to talk about why he picked Disney to sell his company to, and how it all happened.
Now the more cynical out there will say money.
After all, four billion dollars is a lot of money.
That wasn’t the case though.
He didn’t shop it around to different studios or try to find the highest bidder.
When he decided to sell the company he had built over the course of 41 years, he chose Disney.
There was a history between Lucas and Disney that played a pivotal role in the sale, and
it dates back to as far as Lucas’ childhood.
On a lengthy family trip, his parents Dorothy and George Sr took the family down to Anaheim
in July of 1955 for the grand opening of Disneyland.
Lucas was eleven years old at the time.
His path as a filmmaker was still far off, but he immediately took to the immersive lands
and rides the theme park offered.
As he later described it, he was “in heaven.”
The family would continue to make regular trips to Disneyland over the years as George
grew up, planting the seed that would grow over the following decades.
Twenty-two years later Lucas would direct this little film called Star Wars, and it
would launch his career that inadvertently crossed paths with Disney.
In 1979, despite being two of the most sought out directors, Lucas and fellow filmmaker
Steven Spielberg had to shop around their newest collaborative project, Raiders of the
Lost Ark, to different studios in order to find funding.
With Spielberg's reputation of going over schedule and over budget, the script had some
trouble finding financial backing.
However it would finally find that backing from Paramount’s President at the time,
Michael Eisner.
Eisner stressed the importance of good storytelling above all in the industry and felt that he
was investing in Lucas and Spielberg as much as the project.
Years later the relationship between Lucas and Eisner would pay off for the both of them.
In 1984 Disney was in the middle of warding off a hostile takeover.
Part of that attempt included installing new leadership into the company.
While not the only one to make the suggestion, Lucas would reach out to Disney’s majority
shareholders, the Bass Brothers, and personally recommend Michael Eisner for the position.
Eisner would of course accept the position and he would, along with Frank Wells stepping
in as president, serve as the new face and direction of the Walt Disney Company.
One of the first things Eisner would do as CEO is, as it turns out, reach out to George Lucas.
With his talent more than proven by this point, and a working relationship already established
thanks to Indiana Jones, Eisner wanted Disney to work with him on a number of attractions
for the Disney parks.
Lucas, a lifelong Disney fan, jumped at the opportunity.
He would have the chance to help create attractions for the very theme park he delighted in visiting
all those years ago at the age of eleven.
Disney and Lucas would announce in February of 1985 that together they’d be developing
two new attractions.
The first would be a 3D film starring Michael Jackson called Captain EO, and the other would
be a motion simulator based on Star Wars called Star Tours.
Beyond just helping to design the ride, Lucas’ own company Industrial Light & Magic would
do all the animation required for the attraction and both would eventually open to rave reviews.
A few years later Lucas would once against make a connection that would end up playing
an important role down the line.
In the early 1990’s he began working on a television show based on the adventures
of a young Indiana Jones.
He would eventually pitch the series to the chairman of ABC at the time, Bob Iger.
Iger green-lit the show and it ran for two seasons.
In the nearly twenty years following, Lucas would start, create, and finish an entire
other trilogy of Star Wars films.
For better or for worse, they stood out as vastly different films from the trilogy that
came before it.
Star Tours at the Disney Parks was about to reopen with new 3D effects and a new randomized
system that took guests to locations from, again for better or for worse, the prequels.
Lucas himself was checking in on the ride’s progress every couple of weeks over the years
the ride update was being designed.
By that point Bob Iger had replaced Michael Eisner and was Disney’s CEO.
The morning the ride was to reopen in May of 2011, Lucas and Iger would sit down to
breakfast at the Brown Derby.
The Brown Derby didn’t technically serve breakfast, but when you’re the CEO of Disney,
that doesn’t really matter much.
In fact, Iger specifically made this decision so that he could speak with Lucas in private.
Without beating around the bush, Iger asked Lucas if he’d ever consider selling Star
Wars to The Walt Disney Company.
Lucas had just turned 67 years old, and he was already beginning to think about a retirement
plan that involved passing the reins of Star Wars on.
“I’m not ready to pursue that now,” he told Iger.
“But when I am, I’d love to talk.”
It would take another year before Lucas would fully entertain the thought, but when he finally
decided he was going to step down from running LucasFilm, he got in touch with Iger and kicked
off a five month negotiation process.
As it would turn out, Pixar would serve as a major influence for the decision.
You see, one of Iger’s first major decisions as CEO of Disney was to acquire Pixar in 2006,
and what impressed Lucas the most wasn’t what Iger did with the company, but what he
didn’t do.
For the most part, Pixar was left to continue doing what it did best without too much interruption
or change.
Iger was doing the same with Marvel, which Disney had also recently acquired.
Iger’s style seemed to involve letting the talent do what they do best.
Lucas himself held creative control in high regards, for better or worse.
I mean, his disdain for the studio system is what drove him to negotiate to retain the
rights for Star Wars sequels.
It’s what drove him to build LucasFilm into what it became.
The only reason he had a company to sell was because of his passion for creative control.
In a poetic way it was very similar to the way Walt Disney learned to never give up control
of Mickey Mouse.
Perhaps that’s partially why Lucas took to Disney so much.
So without seeking out the highest bidder, Lucas agreed to sell his company to Disney
for a total of a little over four billion dollars, with half of that being Disney stock.
It wasn’t a quick heartless cash grab from one executive to another.
It wasn’t some merger made to give himself a golden parachute.
It was a creator who had spent over 40 years building an empire out of his passion passing
on his creation to an organization that he had looked up to as a kid and worked with
and respected as an adult.
So on October 30th of 2012 he would fly to Burbank to meet with Iger and sign the deal.
From that moment the next chapter of the Star Wars saga would begin.