George Lucas Reveals The Real Reason He Retired & Sold Star Wars

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Summary During an interview at Cannes, George Lucas explained why he sold Star Wars in 2012.

Lucas explains that troubles with theatrical distribution and the rise of streaming led him to retire.

Lucas admits that he felt he didn't know much about where the industry was going as part of this major transition.

George Lucas has explained his reasoning for leaving the Star Wars universe behind. The filmmaker wrote and directed the first feature in the franchise, later retitled A New Hope, which was released in 1977 and launched a multimedia franchise the likes of which had never been seen before. However, in 2012, after five more Star Wars movies and countless television broadcasts, novels, action figures, and more, he sold his company Lucasfilm to Disney, giving up ownership of the long-running sci-fi fantasy franchise that is one of the Top 5 highest-earning in history.

The French outlet Brut recently shared a clip from an interview with Lucas that was conducted at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Check out their post on X below:

In the interview clip, he discusses his retirement, saying that "we could see the problems" with theatrical distribution amid the rise of streaming platforms, particularly Netflix, and he decided to leave the business because he recognized that it was on the verge of a "giant transition." Read a full transcript of his quote below:

Streaming is really powerful, and it's great, it's really upped the movie business because the theatrical movie business... we could see the problems, and it was not good. So everybody was looking to save it, but nobody knew streaming would. And that's when Netflix took off, and at that point, I said, 'I don't know what this is gonna be, there's gonna be a giant transition in the business, I don't know that much about it,' and I sold the company, and I retired.

More to come...

Source: Brut/X

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