Merrick here...
With so much recent activity on the STAR WARS front...the release of Episodes I-VI on Blu-ray late last year, the ongoing STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS animated series on Cartoon Network, the upcoming issuance of KINECT STAR WARS for XBOX 360, and persistent chatter about the looming STAR WARS: UNDERWORLD live action television series...it's hard to wrap one's brain around the possibility of never again seeing fresh STAR WARS movies on the big screen.
Nonetheless, George Lucas seems to be sticking to his recently stated intent to more or less step aside from big-project filmmaking (not sure how the exceedingly complex UNDERWORLD doesn't qualify, but whatever) - a notion newly validated by the TMZ embed below.
A cameraman asks Lucas when we'd see the legendary STAR WARS VII, VIII, and IX... rumored to return some of the original trilogy's cast for adventures set far after RETURN OF THE JEDI. Lucas' answer was quite concise: "never."
See for yourself...
Does he mean it? If Lucas is calling himself "retired," how does this impact a possible INDIANA JONES 5 - which as recently as February he'd said he needed to start working on? My suspicion is that Lucas will never be able to fully divorce himself from creative enterprises , and may (** at most **) merely step back to take more of a supervisory capacity on future endeavors. Whether this means he'll never, evvvvveeerrr let ANYONE make more STAR WARS movies but him? That certainly looks to be the case. Although, personally, I wouldn't be surprised if some other film set in the STAR WARS universe came down the pipeline at some point. Whether our of irresistibility, or necessity.
More as we know more.
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