After George Lucas finished the last of his three “Star Wars” prequels and fans berated him for both Jar Jar Binks and tweaking the original trilogy, Lucas said petulantly, “Why would I make any more when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?”
Suddenly Lucas has changed his mind, selling the franchise to Disney for $4.05 billion. The question is, why now? Lucas could have sold the franchise any time for a fortune. Why this week?
The answer: to avoid tax penalties that will be implemented in 2013. In January, long-term capital gains tax from the sale of assets held more than one year will rise from 15 percent to 20 percent if you’re in Lucas’ tax bracket. And 5 percent of $4 billion is a hell of a lot of money.
Lucas is a leftist hypocrite. In the 1990s, he revised the scene in the original “Star Wars” film where Han Solo shot Greedo, which he said upset viewers because:
Obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom … I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.
It’s not okay to shoot first, apparently, if you’re George Lucas. Unless you want to rake in tens of millions of dollars.
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