It’s sometimes emotional watching them because I feel like I’m that kid again. I did have a meeting with George Lucas about that as well, yes.  George Lucas, right, speaking with Charlie Rose. Only one or two other filmmakers would be able to accomplish this film.
– Leonardo DiCaprio almost played Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels, he revealed in a recent Shortlist interview. "I did have a meeting with George Lucas about that," he says, but he didn't want the role: "Just didn’t feel ready to take that dive. At that point." It's the same reason, he explains, that he met with Joel Schumacher about playing Robin in Batman Forever but didn't actually take the part. "As I recall, I took the meeting, but didn’t want to play the role," he says. "Joel Schumacher is a very talented director but I don’t think I was ready for anything like that." And the same thing happened again with Spider-Man, a role Tobey Maguire eventually took: "That was another one of those situations, similar to Robin, where I didn’t feel ready to put on that suit yet. They got in touch with me." In other revealing, Star Wars-related interviews, George Lucas let slip in a recent interview with Charlie Rose what he really thinks about the new movies, Business Insider reports. He sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 partially because there were three more Star Wars movies he felt should be made, and "to do it right would be 10 years, and I said, 'I'm 70—I don't know whether I'll be here when I'm 80' ... and I want to do [other films], so I have to make the decision on my own that it's time for me to move on." He did have ideas for Episodes VII, VIII, and IX—but Disney "looked at the stories and they said, 'We want to make something for the fans.' I said, 'All I want to do is tell a story.' ... They decided they didn’t want to use those [my] stories, they decided they were going to do their own thing. They weren’t that keen to have me involved anyway." He also added, offhandedly, that he sold the franchise "to the white slavers." He's since apologized for that.