It's true that 9 episodes were once planned. Heck, at one time it was 12 episodes. But Lucas has decided that 6 would suffice. Let's look at the evolution of this story.
In 1978 the second issue of the fan club newsletters states:
"On February 23rd, it was announced that Star Wars Corporation will begin production on the sequel to Star Wars this summer. The title has not been selected yet, but will not be Star Wars II. George Lucas' company, Lucasfilm Limited, will finance the production, currently budgeted for 10 million dollars, with Twentieth Century-Fox acting as distributors. Based on the second of twelve stories in George Lucas's Adventures of Luke Skywalker series..."
The Spring 1980 issue of the fan club newsletter now called Bantha Tracks states:
"BT: At one point there were going to be twelve Star Wars films.
GL: I cut that number down to nine because the other three were tangential to the saga. Star Wars was the fourth story in the saga and was to have been called, "Star Wars, Episode Four: A New Hope." But I decided people wouldn't understand the numbering system so we dropped it. For Empire, though we're putting back the number and will call it Episode Five: The Empire Strikes Back. After the third film in this trilogy we'll go back and make the first trilogy, which deals with the young Ben Kenobi and the young Darth Vader.
BT: What is the third trilogy about?
GL: It deals with the character that survives Star Wars III and his
adventures."
Newsweek May 19, 1980:
"Viewers may be in for a surprise when the credits announce 'Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.' Episode 'FIVE?' Have we slipped into a time warp? Actually, what we are getting is the second act of the middle trilogy of a projected nine-film cycle. The first 'Star Wars' will be retitled 'Episode IV: A New Hope,' and the next sequel, projected for 1983, will resolve all the dangling threads of the Luke Skywalker saga."
Time May 19, 1980:
"Lucas has begun his space saga in the middle, and both pictures are the centerpieces of a projected nine-part series. The remaining movies, fore and aft, have not yet been laid out in detail, but Lucas has the framework, a kind of history of what happened in that galaxy long ago and far away." "The last three episodes involve the rebuilding of the republic. Only two of the main characters will appear in all nine films, and they are the robots, Artoo Detoo and See Threepio. Says Lucas: "In effect, the story will be told through their eyes."
Time May 23, 1983
"The sequels, the three movies that would follow Jedi, are considerably vaguer. Their main theme will be the necessity for moral choices and the wisdom needed to distinguish right from wrong. Luke, who will then be the age Obi-Wan Kenobi is now, some place in his 60's, will reappear, and so will his friends, assuming the creator decides to carry the epic further."
In the 1995 reprint of the ESB novel Lucas states:
"From the onset I conceived Star Wars as a series of six films, or two trilogies."
I could go on and on, but I won't.
