The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art officially opened its doors this week and, if you’re looking for something to blame for the state of Star Wars, it might just be that spaceship-sized building located near downtown Los Angeles.
In a new interview timed to the opening of the museum, Star Wars creator George Lucas admitted that he was planning on making three new Star Wars movies before realizing he had other aspirations in life—mainly this museum—and decided to switch gears.
“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,” Lucas told CBS Sunday Morning. “But I realized 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.”
Lucas famously sold Lucasfilm, which included the rights to Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and more, to the Walt Disney Company back in 2012. It was likely around this time that plans for the museum began to take shape, as some of the earliest plans were announced in 2013. Along with the sale, Lucas provided Disney with notes and outlines about three additional Star Wars movies he’d been thinking about, but the company decided to go in another direction. And so we got Rey, Kylo Ren, “The dead speak!,” and more.
What’s interesting about this quote, though, is that while the existence of those ideas is well documented, we were never exactly clear if Lucas actually intended to move forward with them in any way. This very much makes it seem as if he did. But seeing as the Star Wars prequels took him almost 10 years to make from first concept until the release of the last film, he probably realized a museum would take even longer, and decided to go that way. As he said, he’s not a young man anymore.
Plus, to be fair, fans did eventually get more Star Wars movies. A lot of them, in fact. And we got this physical monument to Lucas’s love of stories too. It’s kind of a win-win.
For more on the Lucas Museum, read our coverage here or head to the official site. Star Wars returns to theaters twice in 2027, first for the 50th anniversary of the original film on February 19, 2027, and then Star Wars: Starfighter releases on May 28, 2027.
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