George Lucas on walking away from Star Wars: 'Three more movies'

George Lucas is opening up about a road not taken, three additional Star Wars films he had planned to direct before deciding to step away from filmmaking entirely. 

Speaking with Norah O'Donnell on CBS Sunday Morning to discuss both his career and the newly opened Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, Lucas, 82, explained the reasoning behind his 2012 retirement.

"Well, I'm 82, so there is a limit to, when I did this, I decided to retire from making movies, which was a big deal because I had three more Star Wars to make. 

But I realized that I was running out of time, and I did want to make this museum, and I'd spent a lot of time developing digital technology for the movie business."

The films Lucas is referring to are his long-discussed original vision for Episodes VII, VIII and IX, plans he had already begun developing, including early conversations with actors, before selling Lucasfilm to Disney for $4 billion in 2012. 

He's previously described giving up creative control of the franchise as "really, really painful," despite believing it was ultimately the right decision at the time. 

Lucas's last directorial effort remains 2005's Revenge of the Sith, the final film in the prequel trilogy, though he's continued contributing to the Star Wars universe in other ways, including story credit on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and a voice role this year in Illumination's Minions & Monsters.

The Lucas Museum, a $1.5 billion, 300,000-square-foot building spanning 13 acres in Exposition Park, houses roughly 1,200 pieces from Lucas's private art collection, including paintings, sculpture, and original props and costumes from the Star Wars films. 

Its opening gala drew an extensive guest list of major filmmakers and celebrities, including Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, Guillermo del Toro, Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Jackson, alongside stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey and Robert De Niro.