George Lucas Apparently Once Wanted Each 'Star Wars' Film Helmed by Different Director

The Rise of Skywalker, which debuts this December, will mark the final film in the Skywalker Saga. To commemorate the decades-long franchise, Phil Szostak, who is the creative director for Lucasfilm, just tweeted a blurb from Once Upon a Galaxy, a journal detailing the making of Star Wars.

According to ComicBook.com, the journal quote explains how George Lucas and producer Gary Kurtz wanted a different director for each film to give a unique style to each new production. However, the reality was quite different. Lucas himself directed four of the films, and J.J. Abrams has ended up directing two, including the upcoming installment.

The excerpt from the book reads:

"The problem you encounter when doing a follow-up to a very successful picture is that there are directors who shy away from the project for fear of being overshadowed by the reputation of the first film. George Lucas and I interviewed several directors, and one said: 'I don't feel like it would be good for my career now to do something that is in a sense a successor to someone else's work.' But neither George nor I saw Empire as that kind of project. In terms of a saga of interrelated stories we always wanted to have each picture directed by a different person, to add a slightly different style or focus to the overall development, so that when they were eventually seen in a group one could see how the individual filmic styles added to the development of the characters."

Fans of the franchise are confident Abrams will bring his A-game for a second time, having already directed 2015's The Force Awakens, when the final film of the trilogy series premieres Dec. 20, 2019.