Third Star Wars Trilogy?

[Rokenn]

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More from my conversation with George Lucas this past Sunday night (you can read Part 1 of this interview in Monday's column):

The director says he's got plans for his post-Star Wars career. After 30 years of being tied up with the phenomenally successful series, Lucas will set off to make "more personal" films after 2005.

"I'm going to go from complete success to complete failure," he told me, without a wink or a smile. On the contrary, Lucas said he anticipates utter rejection from his fans once Star Wars concludes. "I'm going to make a bunch of movies like THX," he said, referring to his earliest effort. "And if people don't like it, too bad. There will be no Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan for me," he said of pal Steven Spielberg's "serious" movies."There won't be any big dramas or Oscars."

Lucas did tell me that of the current movies in release, he loved Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. "We showed a print of it at the Skywalker Ranch," he said. "I was amazed by what he did with it and where he went. It was terrific."

But Lucas' own career is clearly on his mind these days. He's busy working on Chapter III of Star Wars, which links Attack of the Clones to the original Star Wars.

"I know what I want to do," he said. "It was mapped out from my original writing for 30 years. But still you have these two pieces — Clones and Chapter IV — and you have to make them fit together. You're going to see a lot about Anakin and Luke and Princess Leia's mother, all the adults. And of course Luke and Leia will be infants in it."

I asked him whether he cared about the criticism of Hayden Christensen, who played Anakin in Clones. "Not a bit," Lucas said, "this is a talented kid. Years from now people are going to say, was he always so good, and look at Clones, and realize yes."

Lucas also told me that he and Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson have become good friends, commiserating with each other in Australia and New Zealand on their shoots about making their two series.

"Essentially, Peter is making three three-hour movies out of one book," Lucas said. "And I'm making nine two-hour movies from one book." Of course, Lucas wrote his own book, but the mythology harkens back to Lord of the Rings. "We discuss it a lot because they are similar in nature," said Lucas.

I must say that I've met a few of my heroes in my lifetime and some of them have been disappointments. But George Lucas turned out to be refreshingly candid and enormously pleasant. We don't seem him in New York very often; I hope once Star Wars wraps for good he'll come here more often. And so, yes, "The Force" is with him!

[Thoran]

I have enjoyed all the Star Wars movies, but they are no comparison to LoR. In fact watching the two LoR movies has significanly raised my expectation of how good a Sci-Fi/Fantasy movie needs to be to be "good". I'd LOVE to see a third trilogy in the Star Wars universe... but I'd like to see it written by a top shelf Sci-fi author (if that would even be possible).

[Gazza]

Even though Lucas will never make it and I don't think he'll ever give anyone else permission to make it indepent of him I really think if they were going to make a third trilogy it should be based on the Thrawn Trilogy of books by Timothy Zahn.

[AzRaeL StoRmBlaDe]

I bet many years down the raod, when people run out of ideas, star wars will be revived and the next trilogy will be made, but I don't really think that will be for a long time, maybe like 10-25 years

[HolyWarrior]

Based on how long it took between the first and second trilogies, it will probably be at least 2020 before a third trilogy happens