George Lucas reminisces upon his ‘painful’ ‘Star Wars’ exit

American film maker George Lucas recently sat down for a candid discussion regarding the most “painful” decision of his life.

He spilled the beans behind his departure from the show in an interview with Paul Duncan for his new book The Star Wars Archives: Episodes I-III 1999-2005.

The author even shared the Twitter extract of the entire interview, “At that time, I was starting the next trilogy; I talked to the actors and I was starting to gear up. I was also about to have a daughter with my wife. ‘It takes 10 years to make a trilogy – Episodes I to III took from 1995 to 2005. ‘In 2012, I was 69. So the question was, ‘Am I going to keep doing this for the rest of my life? Do I want to go through this again?’”

“Finally, I decided I’d rather raise my daughter and enjoy life for a while. ‘I’ve spent my life creating Star Wars – 40 years – and giving it up was very, very painful. But it was the right thing to do’.”

Even though he doesn’t regret his decision, the one thing Lucas still looks back on is the fact, “I thought I was going to have a little bit more say about the next three because I’d already started them, but they decided they wanted to do something else.”