In 2012, George Lucas sold the Lucasfilm company to Disney and with it the entire Star Wars franchise, his brainchild, but what if the reason for Lucas selling Star Wars was that he believed the world was about to end? At least according to Seth Rogen this possibility was something definitely on top of Lucas’ mind back in 2011 in a conversation between the two.
Lucas has always reflected on what it was like for him to sell Star Wars in a deal that saw Disney part ways with $4.05 billion in exchange for the 100% Lucas-owned company, that ultimately has proven to be one of the best investments of the decade by quickly tripling that number in terms of revenue. Yet, the famed filmmaker has never really gone on the record to discuss his bizarre conversation with Rogen.
According to Rogen’s own account of the story, it happened when he and fellow producer Evan Goldberg were in a meeting with Steven Spielberg and suddenly Lucas surprised them by showing up, he then proceeded to talk to the group about Mayan doomsday theories involving the movement of tectonic plates and how the world was going to end for about 25 minutes. The moment clearly left an impression on Rogen, although Lucas has always laughed it off as one big joke he pulled on them.
To this day Rogen still swears Lucas was definitely not kidding with his remarks, noting he clearly remembers asking him that and getting an “I know it’s gonna happen…it’s science. And I know science.” response from Lucas. Rogen maintains that Lucas probably denies it because he turned out to be wrong, and even remembers asking Lucas for a seat on his spaceship -in case he had one-, a request he bluntly denied while warning them that “everything west of the San Andreas Fault would soon sink into the ocean.”
Of course, the reason Rogen has been reminiscing about this conversation nowadays is that he’s currently promoting his new book titled Yearbook, which is a written account of some of his funniest stories, including the Lucas one and some other featuring the likes of Snoop Dogg and Nicholas Cage. No matter how that book turns out, Rogen is doing just fine right now with his production company Point Grey Pictures currently boasting Amazon’s megahit The Boys under its belt.
Despite Rogen’s memory being debatably questionable, the whole story does make for a crazy theory that Lucas did really sell Star Wars because he felt he clearly wasn’t going to need it after 2021’s Mayan apocalypse. However, fans will never find out what he intended to do with all that money if that was the case, maybe he built a real Landspeeder.
Source: IndieWire