Published 28 December 2020
Basseterre
Buckie Got It, St. Kitts and Nevis News Source
In 2012, George Lucas gave up his baby. The man behind Star Wars, a space opera series you might have heard of, sold Lucasfilm and all of its assets, including that same space opera series, to Disney, a company you might have heard of. Lucas had been a chief architect of two separate Star Wars trilogies and was starting to look at a third — until this decision was made, and we got the ending to the Skywalker Saga that we got. What prompted this decision? Why wouldn’t he want to see how his brainchild ended?
Lucas explained to author Paul Duncan as part of an interview from Duncan’s book The Star Wars Archives 1999-2005 (via SlashFilm). There’s a lot of candid reasoning and pearls of wisdom to mete out, so I will let Lucas himself do the talking:
“At that time I was starting the next trilogy; I talked to the actors and I was starting to gear up. I was also about to have a daughter with my wife. It takes 10 years to make a trilogy — Episodes I to III took from 1995 to 2005… In 2012 I was 69. So the question was am I going to keep doing this the rest of my life? Do I want to go through this again? Finally, I decided I’d rather raise my daughter and enjoy life for a while.I could have not sold Lucasfilm and gotten somebody to run the productions, but that isn’t retiring. On The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi I tried to stay out of the way, but I couldn’t. I was there every day. Even though the people were friends of mine and they did great work, it wasn’t the same as me doing it; it was like being once removed. I knew that probably wouldn’t work again, that I’d be frustrated. I’m one of those micromanager guys, and I can’t help it. So I figured I would forgo that, enjoy what I had, and I was looking forward to raising my daughter. Also, I wanted to build a museum, which I’d always wanted to do, so I was thinking, ‘If I don’t do this now, I’ll never get that done.’I’ve spent my life creating Star Wars — 40 years — and giving it up was very, very painful. But it was the right thing to do. I thought I was going to have a little bit more to say about the next three because I’d already started them, but they decided they wanted to do something else. Things don’t always work out the way you want it. Life is like that.”
