George Lucas says he wants to retire from making blockbusters

Star Wars director and Red Tails producer George Lucas said in a recent interview with the New York Times that he plans on quitting the business of making big blockbuster films so that he can focus on making smaller films.

In the interview, which was published Tuesday, Lucas lays it on the line, saying that after Red Tails, he plans on leaving Hollywood behind. “I’m retiring...I’m moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff,” Lucas told the Times.

However, he is still working on a fifth Indiana Jones film, which will act as a last hurrah.

“Once [Red Tails] is finished, he’s done everything he’s ever wanted to do,” Rick McCallum said. McCallum has acted as producer on practically all of Lucas’ recent projects, including the Star Wars prequels and Red Tails.

The Times adds that the films Lucas wants to make are more “personal,” the type of work he believed he would do when he graduated from film school in the late 1960s. Lucas started his career with THX-1138 and American Graffiti, two films that fall under this criteria, but then in 1977, Star Wars changed his path.

This isn’t the first time Lucas has said he wants to devote his time to small movies. Time reports that Lucas has been saying this in interviews dating as far back as 1991 when he told a Newsday reporter that he wanted to go back to making movies like American Graffiti. In 1999, sound designer Walter Murch commented in an interview, ““If you look at what happened to George, his oft-stated ‘What I’m doing to do next is small, experimental films’ … well, he’s never done that.”

Lucas also addressed criticisms from Star Wars and Indy fans, who felt that he has betrayed what the original movies were like in new edits and in the newer films. “On the Internet, all those same guys that are complaining I made a change are completely changing the movie...I’m saying: ‘Fine. But my movie, with my name on it, that says I did it, needs to be the way I want it.’”

Entertainment Tonight reports that Red Tails hits theaters Friday and stars Terrence Howard, Ne-Yo and Cuba Gooding, Jr. as members of the first black pilots in WWII. Anthony Hemingway directed the film.