George Lucas Delivers His Final Verdict on Star Wars After the Disney Takeover

George Lucas has clearly made peace with the Disney era of Star Wars, even if the journey to get here was bumpy. The 81-year-old creator says he has moved on, which, given his reasons for selling in the first place and where he has poured his energy since, tracks.

Lucas on Disney steering Star Wars

Lucas has been blunt over the years about not loving every creative choice under Disney. But when asked recently about where he stands now, he was pretty zen about it (via The Wall Street Journal):

"Disney took it over and they gave it their vision. That’s what happens. Of course I’ve moved past it. I mean, I’ve got a life."

He sold the company in large part because he did not want to spend another decade buried in Star Wars while raising his daughter. So yeah, he moved on. And he has had a massive passion project waiting in the wings.

The museum that has his full attention

Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, have spent the better part of the last decade building the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, slated to open in 2026. Price tag so far: roughly $1 billion. It will house 33 galleries, and only one of them is for Star Wars. That lone gallery will include pieces like the N-1 Starfighter, but Lucas was careful not to let his space saga swallow the place.

"It’s one gallery out of 33. And I did it grudgingly. I didn’t want people to come to the museum and say, 'Where’s the Star Wars?'"

If you are sensing a theme — Lucas wanting his post-Star Wars life to be about more than Star Wars — you are not wrong.

The sequel plans Disney bought... and then shelved

Before the sale, Lucas handed over outlines for a sequel trilogy. His roadmap would have doubled down on the science-mysticism of the Force, digging deeper into midichlorians as part of a broader symbiotic ecosystem. It also featured a world on a microscopic scale and the Whills, beings that feed on the Force and pull the strings of the universe. In his version, a weathered Luke Skywalker would train a young Jedi named Kira (yep, that was the early name on the page).

Disney bought those treatments, but Michael Arndt and J.J. Abrams pitched a different take, and Lucas felt blindsided when the studio went that way. Then-CEO Bob Iger later spelled out the disconnect from his side:

"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. 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."

So yes, he distanced himself, and yes, he did give Disney a suggested direction they ultimately did not use.

How the Disney trilogy played with critics, audiences, and wallets

• Star Wars: The Force Awakens — IMDb: 7.7, Tomatometer/Audience: 93%/84%, Box office: $2.07B
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi — IMDb: 6.8, Tomatometer/Audience: 91%/41%, Box office: $1.33B
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker — IMDb: 6.4, Tomatometer/Audience: 51%/86%, Box office: $1.07B

That middle movie split the room in a way we do not see often: critics high, audience score in the basement. Financially, all three minted money, but the trendline slid.

Where this leaves Star Wars

It has been a minute since the last Star Wars feature. Lucas seems content to let Disney do Disney while he opens a museum that is not secretly a Star Wars shrine. The franchise will try to win people back on the big screen soon enough; for now, the sequel trilogy is streaming on Disney+ in the U.S.