George Lucas Claims Mean People On The Internet Made Him Sell Lucasfilm

“I sold Star Wars to Mickey Mouse. DEAL WITH IT.”

One of the biggest stories recently was the revelation that George Lucas unloaded his entire business to Disney for a cool $4 billion. Many wondered how this out-of-left-field deal came together.

It turns out that, among other things, Lucas was sick of hearing jokes about his neck pouch.

BusinessWeek has a lengthy, and engaging, look at how the Disney/Lucas deal came together and the whole thing is worth a read whether you love Star Wars, love the film industry, or are a tiresome nerd (I happen to be all three, so this was like crack). But there are also all sorts of little tidbits, like this:

The criticism got to Lucas. He found it difficult to be creative when people were calling him a jerk. “It was fine before the Internet,” he says. “But now with the Internet, it’s gotten very vicious and very personal. You just say, ‘Why do I need to do this?’ “

Of note, this comes immediately after a paragraph discussing Jar-Jar Binks and the prequels, which are so badly written the first one accidentally features a fairly conservative message.

Other points of interest in the article:

• Lucas sold to Disney based on the fact that they bought Pixar and Marvel and essentially left them alone.
• Kathleen Kennedy was handpicked by Lucas himself to run the company after he left.
• Much of what’s going on in Episode VII was in the works before Lucas made the sale.
• The entire reason J.J. Abrams relented was because Kennedy actively went after him.

The whole thing is worth a read, so check it out.