Late last year, following the announcement that Disney would be taking over LucasFilm and its properties, most notably Star Wars, the studio released the first part of a 15 minute interview with George Lucas, founder, owner, and CEO of LucasFilm, and Kathleen Kennedy, co-Chairman of LucasFilm, and the woman chosen by Lucas to succeed her.
Since then, the deal has gone through, of course, and Lucas has officially retired and handed over the reins, but this interview has only been released a few minutes at a time over the last month and a half, and now, we finally have the entire thing.
In this new clip, Lucas likens his retirement to other major life choices, like moving out of one’s parents’ house or getting married. He’s frightened of leaving his comfort zone, but excited to get move on to new projects.
In case you haven’t seen them yet, or if you don’t remember how the first 12 minutes went, here are all five of the parts:
Of course, Lucas is not retiring from the business altogether, just from running LucasFilm. As Kennedy points out, he will still be a voice in her ear, especially regarding decisions that need to be made with Star Wars, but that’s not all he’ll be doing. Lucas has stated in other interviews previously that one of his reasons for stepping away from LucasFilm and its properties is that he wants to make other films, unconnected to Star Wars or Indiana Jones, and doesn’t feel like he can do that properly while he’s still in charge of those classic franchises.
What name he’s going to put on those films if not LucasFilm, is unknown, nor what the nature of the films will be. Recently, Lucas executive produced Red Tails, a historical drama about the Tuskegee Airmen staring Cuba Gooding Jr., for 20th Century Fox. Though the film was not a box-office success, Lucas has said that he would like to do more one-off dramas like that one.
As for Star Wars, Disney has already announced that Episode VII, the first film in a new trilogy should be ready by 2015. Currently Micheal Ardnt is on board to write the first draft of the screenplay, and we should start to get some pre-production news later this year.
