h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've noticed in the last couple of days, reading people's responses to the movie and what the media has been saying, there is a misunderstanding. People say George Lucas hasn't done very much. That cannot be farther from the truth.

http://www.eonline.com/News/More/lucas.html

I was reading the above interview, and at one point a reporter asked him, if Star Wars wasn't as all-encompassing in its scope of his career would he have been able to direct movies on a regular basis as opposed to just doing one every decade or two? He seemed a bit upset about that.

http://us.imdb.com/Name?Lucas,+George

The International Movie Database gives a clear story. True, Lucas has only directed a dozen movies, and most of those were smaller projects in the sixties. He's known for Star Wars and to a bit lesser extent American Grafitti and THX 1138. He's directed little, and only a few of those efforts are memorable in many people's opinions. People think there's this massive gap between 1977 and today. That he became reclusive and unproductive.

He simply left the director's chair. He has produced more films than he's directed, including the Indy films, Howard the Duck, Willow, Tucker, and even some television programs. He's written, edited, and even acted a couple times.

He also has several companies that he's presiding over including Industrial Light and Magic, Skywalker Sound, Lucasfilm, Lucas Arts Entertainment, Lucas Learning, Lucas Digital..

He's been directing all this time. He's directing companies!

I looked at the film database and saw he produced "Herbie" in 1966. Disappointingly, this is not the film about the VW Beetle, but some short student work of his.
If G.L. is looking for another prequel/sequel project after all the Star Wars films then maybe he could do a modern day Herbie film featuring one of those new Beetles - maybe with a talking dashboard vase.
Seriously, Lucasfilms/Arts must be one of the biggest multimedia companies in the world. It's good to know that you don't have to join the dark side (e.g. Darth Gates) in order to succeed.
If there was one SF project that I'd really love somone of George Lucas' stature to cover it would be that of the Culture novels of Iain M.Banks. It's like a really twisted/grown-up spin on both the 'Star Wars' universe and the Foundation series of books by Asimov.
If anyone reading this is interested in the Culture, the first book in the series is called 'Consider Phlebas'. Highly recommended by a wise fool.