George Lucas' original plan was to make Star Wars: Episode VII and then he was going to sell Lucasfilm and the rights to the Star Wars franchise, but he had a change of heart when Disney offered him $4 billion. Make sure you read that dollar amount with your best Dr. Evil voice for full effect. After the sale, Lucas turned over his outlines for the new trilogy to Disney. They then passed it along to Michael Arndt, who was the first screenwriter to work on Disney and J.J. Abrams' Star Wars VII script.
"The ones that I sold to Disney, they came up to the decision that they didn't really want to do those," Lucas told Cinemablend. "So they made up their own. So it's not the ones that I originally wrote [on screen in Star Wars: The Force Awakens]."
Rumor has it, Lucas' treatment was well liked by Arndt because it focused on new characters instead of Han, Luke and Leia, but director J.J. Abrams didn't want the franchises' classic heroes playing second fiddle to newcomers. That disagreement led to Arndt walking away from the project and J.J. and Lawrence Kasden taking over writing the script.
Star Wars: Episode VII - Actors John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, Max von Sydow, Lupita Nyong'o and Gwendoline Christie will join the original stars of the saga, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker in the new film. It's being directed by J.J. Abrams from a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan and Abrams. Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams, and Bryan Burk are producing, and John Williams returns as the composer. The movie opens worldwide on
December 18, 2015.