Star Wars creator George Lucas was pretty shrewd in how he went about preparing Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise for its sale to Disney last year.

According to Businessweek 's in-depth chat with all the principals involved in the sale, Lucas actually started actively developing the new Star Wars trilogy last year before the company was sold to Disney, thus increasing its value at the time of the deal.He even went so far as to begin formal discussions with stars Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher about returning to the series that made them famous and crafting treatments for the next trilogy with screenwriter Michael Arndt and consultant and Star Wars vet Lawrence Kasdan before even agreeing to show the Disney brass the rough outlines for Star Wars: Episode VII, VIII and IX.As Businessweek explains: "Once Lucas got assurances from Disney in writing about the broad outlines of the deal, he agreed to turn over the treatments—but insisted they could only be read by [Disney CEO Robert] Iger, [Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan] Horn, and Kevin Mayer, Disney’s executive vice president for corporate strategy. 'We promised,' says Iger. 'We had to sign an agreement.' When Iger finally got a look at the treatments, he was elated. 'We thought from a storytelling perspective they had a lot of potential,' he says."The article adds that Lucas has "attended story meetings for the new film, adjudicating the physical laws and attributes of the Star Wars universe. 'I mostly say, ‘You can’t do this. You can do that,’' Lucas says. 'You know, ‘The cars don’t have wheels. They fly with antigravity.’ There’s a million little pieces. Or I can say, ‘He doesn’t have the power to do that, or he has to do this.’ I know all that stuff.'"Lucas was asked by Businessweek if he'd reached out to Hamill, Ford and Fisher to let them know about the new trilogy and the sale before the deal went down, Lucas revealed, "We had already signed Mark and Carrie and Harrison—or we were pretty much in final stages of negotiation. So I called them to say, ‘Look, this is what’s going on.’ ' He pauses. 'Maybe I’m not supposed to say that. I think they want to announce that with some big whoop-de-do, but we were negotiating with them.' Then he adds: 'I won’t say whether the negotiations were successful or not.'”For more inside baseball from Businessweek on how Disney acquired Lucasfilm, watch the video below: