George Lucas has left Star Wars behind and is building a museum

George Lucas has found a new passion he now regards as more demanding than directing films.

More than a decade has passed since George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney for $4 billion. That transaction, which reshaped the destiny of Star Wars, effectively closed the chapter on his role as the director and world-builder behind a saga that defined an era of cinema. Now, at eighty-one, Lucas says he has let go of Star Wars and turned his attention to a new chapter of his life.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the filmmaker said his current priority is completing The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. Roughly a billion dollars have been invested in the project so far. The museum is set to open next year and will celebrate storytelling across disciplines — not just film.

“It’s only one gallery out of thirty-three. I set it up more out of a sense of duty,” Lucas said when asked about Star Wars’ presence in the collection. He stressed that he did not want the museum to be defined solely by the iconic saga. A few artifacts will appear — including the N-1 starfighter from The Phantom Menace — but beyond that the franchise’s footprint is minimal.

The director also weighed in on the franchise’s recent trajectory: “Disney took it and made it their own. That happens. Of course I’ve moved on. I have a life. I’m building a museum. It’s harder than making movies.”

After the sale, Disney initially planned to draw on Lucas’s draft ideas for the new trilogy but ultimately abandoned that approach. The resulting films — The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker — split audiences and sparked endless debate about what the universe lost without its original creator. Lucas himself, however, has no intention of returning to Star Wars.

Source: iXBT.games