10 Movie Franchises That Embarrassed Their Creators
10. Star Wars
As much as Star Wars might be responsible for George Lucas' immense fame and fortune, to say that he's had a "complicated" relationship with the mammoth sci-fi property would be a massive understatement.
Lucas' issues stem all the way back to the original 1977 movie, which the writer-director to this day insists he's far from happy with.
Lucas infamously released massively controversial "Special Editions" of the original trilogy upon the 20th anniversary of A New Hope, in an attempt to deliver something closer to his original vision of the films.
Elsewhere there's the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, a one-off calamitous TV broadcast which, while not written or directed by Lucas, is nevertheless considered canon. Lucas famously said of the show, which endures in bootleg form, "If I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every copy of that show and smash it."
But most recently, Lucas was again left red-faced following Disney's $4 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm and the subsequent continuation of the Star Wars saga. The purchase included Lucas' own plot outlines for a future trilogy, though Disney only bought them under the stipulation that they weren't obliged to actually use them.
In the words of Disney's CEO Bob Iger, "George immediately got upset as...it dawned on him that we weren’t using one of the stories he submitted during the negotiations. In the first meeting with him about the future of Star Wars, George felt betrayed, and while this whole process would never have been easy for him, we’d gotten off to an unnecessarily rocky start."
Though Lucas himself has given relatively measured responses about the newer Star Wars movies, Iger claims he "didn’t hide his disappointment" after viewing an early screening of The Force Awakens, declaring, "There’s nothing new."
Still, a net worth of $6 billion sure has to sooth the ego, eh George?