Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, and Ron Howard Turned Down Directing THE PHANTOM MENACE
Here's a cool piece of movie trivia for you to share around your Thanksgiving tables: even though George Lucas ended up directing all three of the Star Wars prequels, he initially went to three of Hollywood's biggest directors and asked them to direct The Phantom Menace, but all three turned him down.
To promote his new film In the Heart of The Sea, director Ron Howard went on the Happy Sad Confused podcast and around the 31:00 minute mark, revealed that he, Robert Zemeckis, and Steven Spielberg all rejected Lucas's offer:
"[Lucas] didn't necessarily want to direct [the prequels]. He told me that he had talked to Zemeckis, he talked to me, he talked to Steven Spielberg, and I was the third one he spoke to, and we all said the same thing: 'George, you should just do it.' Nobody wanted to follow that act, I don't think, at that point. That was an honor, but it would have been just too daunting."
I wonder if this is just Howard being diplomatic, or if what he really means is that the script for The Phantom Menace was garbage and that's the real reason these guys wanted to stay so far away from it. But even if that's not the case, can you imagine if Lucas handed you that script and asked you to direct it? With the way he eventually went on to pioneer a lot of green screen techniques on that film, "daunting" is probably a pretty apt way to describe the feeling of making that project.
Later in the interview, he spoke about the reason he hasn't made a superhero movie before:
I’ve had opportunities over the years [to make superhero movies]. I really feel like you shouldn’t make a movie as a kind of exercise. You have to be all the way in. I was never a comic book guy. I like the movies when I see them, especially the origin stories. I never felt like I could be on the set, at 3 o’clock in the morning, tired, with 10 important decisions to make, and know, intuitively, what the story needs. For me, I’d be copycatting and not inventing. I’ve never said yes to one.
That's a level of self-awareness that I feel is sort of rare these days. Most people in Hollywood seem to operate with the "fake it 'til you make it" mentality, but Howard hasn't built the career he's had by diving into things ill-prepared.