The man who started it all will not be working on any subsequent films.
While George Lucas has been called everything from a visionary to a “childhood ruiner,” he is for sure one thing: done with Star Wars.
The 71-year-old filmmaker and billionaire recently talked with Variety on his decision to leave the series that he created behind.
“You go to make a movie and all you do is get criticized,” Lucas explained. “And it’s not much fun. You can’t experiment.”
Lucas was directly involved with the original trilogy and the prequel films. He scripted most of them, with the exception of The Empire Strikes Back, and directed A New Hope as well as all of the prequels.
In 2012, The Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm for over $4 billion.
Disney quickly began work on a new Star Wars trilogy, but Lucas was not a fan of the direction the new owners wanted to take.
He explained his disagreement with Disney to CBS News.
“The issue was ultimately, they looked at the stories and they said, ‘We want to make something for the fans,'” Lucas explained. “People don’t actually realize it’s actually a soap opera and it’s all about family problems – it’s not about spaceships. So they decided they didn’t want to use those stories, they decided they were going to do their own thing so I decided, ‘fine…. I’ll go my way and I let them go their way.'”
Subsequently, Lucas had no involvement with the very recently released Episode VII, nor will he be working on any of the upcoming sequels or spinoff films.
Lucas has since stated he would like to work on smaller, personal films that probably would not be huge releases like Star Wars. He has yet to officially announce any new projects.
Love him or hate him, there is no denying there would be no Star Wars without George Lucas.
Thank you George, and best of luck with whatever you do next.
