Lucas' 'Magic' lives on, at home and on screen

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Exclusive clip: Musical duel in 'Strange Magic' Marianne (voiced by Evan Rachel Wood) sings Heart's "Straight On" while taking the fight to the Bog King (Alan Cumming) in an exclusive clip from the animated movie "Strange Magic."

For a guy who's "happily retired," George Lucas is sure keeping himself busy.

The iconic filmmaker isn't regularly tinkering around in the Star Wars universe anymore — that's now director J.J. Abrams' gig — but he has created a new fantasy landscape with the animated musical Strange Magic (out Jan. 23), in which fairies, elves and romance are more plentiful than Jedi, Wookiees and the Force.

"My motivation has always been just doing what I want to do and making a movie that I think will be interesting, and that's just been the way I've done it my whole life," says Lucas, 70, who has been working on the "personal-ish" movie on the side for 15 years.

"I never expected to be successful — it's just one of those things that happened. It happened that the stuff I like everybody else liked."

There's more than just filmmaking: Lucas continues to develop a museum of narrative art that he hopes to open in Chicago by the end of the decade. More important, his most pressing day job is to be a doting father to Everest, his 17-month-old daughter with wife Mellody Hobson.

Lucas, who also has three grown adopted children, appreciates being a dad a lot more now because he's able to. Plus, he knows that kids grow up fast.

"By the time she's 5, she'll have her own career going and being in school and talking about her friends and her homework," Lucas says. "The fun, goofy time will fall into place in reality, as opposed to right now, (when) she doesn't have much else to do but hang out with her father."

Strange Magic director Gary Rydstrom says Lucas retains the creativity and skills that were showcased with that galaxy far, far away, the Indiana Jones franchise, the 1960s-set American Graffiti, the fantasy fare of Labyrinth and Willow and other blockbusters.

Rydstrom saw it when Lucas, an executive producer of Magic, would get down to business in the editing room. "He's such a natural filmmaker that when you work with him, you get down to filmmaking," Rydstrom says. "It's not about being a fan or any of that. It's about making something cool."

The stories Lucas comes up with continue to be top-notch, says Alan Cumming, who voices the Bog King in Magic: "He is the modern American fairy-tale monger."

Lucas' little girl was one of the reasons Lucas stepped away from Lucasfilm, the company he started in the 1970s. In the span of a year beginning in October 2012, he sold it to Disney for $4 billion, married Hobson in June 2013 and welcomed Everest (born via surrogate) two months later.

Lucas already started to develop the next three Star Wars films, but he knew a third trilogy was a 10-year commitment at least. He at first expected to finish Episode VII, release it in May 2015 and then sell the company afterward.

But Disney expressed interest and came along at the right moment, Lucas says. "It's better for me to get out at the beginning of a new thing and I can just remove myself.

"The time is more important to me than the money."

Now he can focus on writing what he calls small "experimental" films and be first in line in December for Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

"The only thing I really regret about Star Wars is the fact I never got to see it — I never got to be blown out of my seat when the ship came over the screen," Lucas says. "The next one, I'll be able to enjoy it like anybody else."