Disney CEO Bob Iger Reveals George Lucas Felt 'Betrayed' By New' Star Wars' Trilogy

George Lucasreportedly wasn’t happy withDisney‘s plans for the latest blockbusterStar Warstrilogy.

However, Iger reportedly writes in the memoir, “we made clear … that we would not be contractually obligated to adhere to the plot lines he’d laid out.”

During a meeting where they began to discuss the first movie in the third trilogy, 2015’sStar Wars: The ForceAwakens, Iger, 68, writes that Lucas “immediately got upset as they began to describe the plot and it dawned on him that we weren’t using one of the stories he submitted during the negotiations.”

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“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,” the CEO continues, according toTHR. “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.”

Iger continued: “George felt betrayed, and while this whole process would never have been easy for him, we’d gotten off to an unnecessarily rocky start.”

Bob Iger.Steven Ferdman/Patrick McMullan/Getty

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After Lucas saw theThe Force Awakensin a private screening, Iger reportedly writes, he “didn’t hide his disappointment.”

“‘There’s nothing new,’ he said,” Iger writes. “In each of the films in the original trilogy, it was important to him to present new worlds, new stories, new characters, and new technologies. In this one, he said, ‘There weren’t enough visual or technical leaps forward.’ He wasn’t wrong, but he also wasn’t appreciating the pressure we were under to give ardent fans a film that felt quintessentiallyStar Wars.”

Iger continued, according toTHR: “We’d intentionally created a world that was visually and tonally connected to the earlier films, to not stray too far from what people loved and expected, and George was criticizing us for the very thing we were trying to do.”

Lucasfilm

Also starringJohn BoyegaandOscar Isaac, the movie finishes up the Skywalker saga that Lucas kicked off with 1977’sStar Wars: A New Hope.

Even moreStar Warscontent is in the works at Disney+, the company’s upcoming streaming service, including anObi-Wan Kenobi spin-off seriesand the highly-anticipated seriesThe Mandalorian, which starsPedro Pascal.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalkerhits theaters on Dec. 20.

source: people.com