The one and only George Lucas famously walked away from the “Star Wars” franchise he created in 2012 when he sold off Lucasfilm to Disney.
As a result, several “Star Wars” projects in development were scrapped. One of those was the lavish “Star Wars Underworld” TV series, which producer Rick McCallum revealed a few years ago had around sixty episode scripts at third-draft level when the project was scrapped.
The other, of course, was the long-gestating film sequel trilogy which Lucas himself was planning to eventually get around to. In 2020, we learned that Lucas had already put plans for that trilogy in motion before the sale, including talking to actors and readying tech.
Aged in his late sixties at the time, he realised that another “Star Wars” trilogy would essentially consume another decade of his life. So, he chose to raise his young daughter and pursue dreams of a museum he had wanted to build for years.
That dream came true with the opening of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which was opened to the public today. In a recent extended interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Lucas discussed his decision to retire from filmmaking:
“Well, I’m 82, so there is a limit to – when I did this, I decided to retire from making movies, which was a big deal because I had three more ‘Star Wars’ to make. But I realised that I was running out of time, and I did want to make this museum, and I’d spent a lot of time developing digital technology for the movie business. You know, all art depends on technology.”
He says one key difference for him is that whereas films eventually fade, the museum won’t: “The advantage of architecture is it lasts. A movie comes out, six weeks, it’s gone.”
Ultimately, a sequel trilogy was made, without Lucas, between 2015-2019 to a decidedly mixed reception. The franchise celebrates its 50th anniversary next year with the original theatrical version of 1977’s “Star Wars” set to hit cinemas in February.
