Did Disney really have a choice when to came to the EU though? Prefer they make a movie with drama then “well Han couldn’t die here because he’s gotta be around for the Vong war”!
Conversely, if they’d set the ST after whenever they were up to in the EU at that point in 2013, they would’ve had to explain - or find a way to avoid explaining - Chewie’s absence.
It’s also unclear whether it was really Disney’s call to jettison the EU, or George’s. In an interview with Total Film just over a decade ago, George said the story told in the EU post-RotJ wasn’t at all what he would’ve done with it.
But I honestly wonder if there still couldn’t have been a way to tell a story set 41 years after Endor and within the same continuity as the EU that didn’t require audiences to know what had transpired in that time. I guess we’ll never know until someone gets more info from GL and Michael Arndt about the original plans for the ST as of 2012.
Until then, all we have to go on is the knowledge that JJ rewrote the script for VII to give the returning characters a bigger role and this recent interview with George about Microbiotic World.