Q&As About 'Star Wars': Other than money, why did George Lucas sell the Star Wars franchise to Disney and make Kathleen Kennedy in charge of the franchise going forward?

On Quora, inquiring member Anthony Perez asks:

Other than money, why did George Lucas sell the Star Wars franchise to Disney and make Kathleen Kennedy in charge of the franchise going forward?

My reply:

First of all, Lucas did not simply sell the Star Wars franchise, as your question erroneously states. He sold Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company he founded in 1971 after leaving Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope, which he also helped to create back in ‘69. This means that Lucas not only sold Lucasfilm and its various subsidiaries, including Skywalker Sound, THX Labs, and Industrial Light & Magic; he also sold Lucasfilm’s intellectual properties, including Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Red Tails and Willow.

Before the sale to The Walt Disney Company (TWDC), Lucas had pretty much decided to retire anyway, but he didn’t want Lucasfilm to die off or be purchased by just anyone. He was 68 years old and did not want to spend any more time making blockbusters, but he wanted to make sure the company and his employees survived. So he reached to Disney first and offered to sell them LFL and its assets for $4.3 billion in cash and stock in TWDC.

Simply put, Lucas chose Disney because he already had a great working relationship with the company since the 1980s. The Star Tours and Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular attractions at various Disney theme parks were joint ventures between the two companies, plus it was Walt Disney himself who had served as one of his inspirations as a kid growing up in Modesto, Calif., in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He believed that TWDC would keep the company intact and the legacy of Star Wars could thus continue without him.

As to why he chose Kathleen Kennedy? Toxic “fanboys” have unfairly accused her of ruining Star Wars with her alleged SJW agenda (BS, I say), but Ms. Kennedy is one of the most respected and successful producers in Hollywood. She had worked on many Lucasfilm/Amblin Entertainment projects since 1980, so she has more filmmaking savvy (and the Academy Awards to prove it) than your average post-Lucas Star Wars basher. She is Lucas’s long-time friend and is a consummate professional, so she got the job of leading Lucasfilm in its new era as a TWDC subsidiary.

Also, while we are speaking of the toxic fandom, Lucas was tired of the bashing he received from unhappy fanboys from 1997 onward, first for altering the Original Trilogy by adding CGI effects that (admittedly) were pretty hit-or-miss, then for making the Prequel Trilogy in a way that failed to please everyone. (Again, many of the critiques about Episodes I-III were valid, but they were often expressed in rude and hateful ways that were neither nice nor respectful.)

So, yeah. If a guy is pushing 70 and getting called a “hack” and “rapist of childhoods,” he’s bound to say, “Okay. you know what? I’m done.””

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/may/31/george-lucas-retiring
https://techcrunch.com/2012/10/30/george-lucas-i-sold-lucasfilm-to-disney-to-protect-it/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQa-gYxy79c