Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s trailer had a broken Death Star flash. If you know the history of The Force Awakens, you might have seen this before in a book somewhere. At least as concept art
There’s a striking image sitting at the end of the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker teaser trailer: The Death Star, broken and defeated, rising out of an ocean. But what’s the Death Star doing there? We might be able to figure that out, thanks to the long, convoluted false starts that eventually became The Force Awakens.
At least as far back as May 2011, George Lucas was thinking about retiring. In June 2012, he hired Kathleen Kennedy, a seven-time Academy Award-nominated producer and executive, as co-chair of Lucasfilm. They started to get Lucasfilm’s house in order.
Though it wouldn’t be announced until November 2012, Lucasfilm’s co-chairs hired screenwriter Michael Arndt before the Disney sale and brought in Lawrence Kasdan (screenwriter of Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and co-writer of Solo: A Star Wars Story) as a consultant.
In October 2012, George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney. The press release announcing the sale said that Lucas would serve “as creative consultant.”
In January 2013, three months after the sale, Lucas met with those working on the new movies, according to Bloomberg. He “provided his Episode VII treatment to the project’s creative team,” according to The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Then things kind of went to crap, at least between Lucas and Lucasfilm.
We don’t know precisely what caused George Lucas and his former company to part ways, but January 2013 seems to be an inflection point. Three important things happened that month: Lucasfilm announced that J.
