I’m looking at an article from the Boston Globe Sun (2/6/1983) about how Star Wars on HBO, and it put out this interesting tidbit:
"Star Wars (Episode 4) and “The Empire Strikes Back” (Episode 5) will be followed this May by “The Revenge of the Jedi” (Episode 6). Lucas then plans to shoot the first trilogy beginning in 1986 and then the final trilogy in 1995, although he has no firm commitment from any of the actors.
It also states that the whole thing will have been finished by 2007, although of course in reality it took a lot longer than that.
Can you imagine if it did, though? By this logic, we could’ve seen Episode I as early as 1988, and a vastly different prequel and sequel trilogy to what we got. Would the Special Editions or the Disney buyout have even happened then?
Needless to say, this avenue is something of a goldmine for alternate history buffs.
Ol’ George has the GOUT, I see.
I imagine Lucas would’ve had to have taken a more hands-off approach and trusted the directors’ creative vision without his micromanagement, if only for the sake of his own sanity. Filming three trilogies back-to-back over a 30-odd-year stretch would take a lot out of a person.
Gods for some, miniature libertarian socialist flags for others.
He kept changing the number of episodes. I guess by the 1990s it was always going to be 9. But he never made the last trilogy. I mean if he hadn’t sold and Rick McCallum was the producer of the sequel trilogy things would have been very different. He probably would have directed and worked with the writers on 7, and came up with a story for 8 and 9 and had one or two other directors make them.
But he said there is no Episode VII 😉
But he said there is no Episode VII 😉
And he was right that awful Disney Sequel Trilogy are not the Real Sequels to the OT
But he said there is no Episode VII 😉
When do we get Episodes I-III? 😃
From the 10th anniversary of the Original Trilogy thread:
‘1987 George Lucas on PREQUELS/SEQUELS of Star Wars at “Celebration 0” - at the 10th Anniversary Convention’:-
www.youtube.com/shorts/YK_r1FmCRC8 - a 1 minute video at the Skywalking Through Neverland YouTube channel.
Fan to George: “Will you do the first Trilogy, first, then the last one?”
George Lucas: “Yeah, I’ll do the first Trilogy, first. There are 9 floating around there somewhere… but I’ll guarantee that 3 are pretty much organized in my head, and there are a lot of notes on them. The other 3 are kind of out there somewhere.”
“In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be “replaced” by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.” - George Lucas
It also states that the whole thing will have been finished by 2007, although of course in reality it took a lot longer than that.
Did it? Pretty sure the Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005. George has made it very clear Disney’s movies have nothing to do with his vision, so they arguably shouldn’t even be part of this particular discussion.
Even without external considerations, I think by ROTS George was well and truly exhausted and never would have made another, regardless. Doing two more trilogies probably sounded really nice to him in the 70s/80s, not so much after getting much older and having dedicated another decade to Star Wars already.
It was longer than that though. He also spent the years developing Star Wars underworld, working on Clone Wars. He started writing Phantom Menace in Nov 1st 1994, and sold to Disney in Oct 30th 2012.
Not to mention he made a 4th Indiana Jones film, and also Red Tails and Strange Magic.
From what we’ve been told Lucas was working on the Star Wars sequel treatments before he sold Lucasfilm. He hired writers to develop them into full screenplays. Obvious that never happened due to some decision made by Kathy Kennedy or Iger.
I really don’t blame him for selling though 3 decades doing Star Wars without a break would be a bit much if the sequels took ten years.
Remember he also had plans to make a 5th Indiana Jones and to do a Willow sequel, and a bunch of personal experimental films and never did them. Probably due to him being one person and time and not for lack of interest.
He works so slow look how long it took to get the prequel trilogy and Crystal Skull made. We were lucky with the output he gave us because he set himself an unachievable impossible goal.