[KnightStalker]

IIRC I read an article years ago where he stated that he only thought about the idea of 9 movies, IF he had the time to do that many.

Well, with the long delay between '84 and '97, he had worked on so much other stuff (Howard the Duck, Indy Jones 2 & 3, The Young Indy Chronicles) that he learned and developed new filming techniques and methods which led to his being able to tweak the original SW trilogy with the "new at the time" (in the late 90's) CG technology. With the success of the enhanced OT in the theaters, he realized he had the opportunity to do the first three installments (TPM, AotC, and RotS), but so much time had passed, that he knew, with the 3 year gap between installments (due to post-prod. work), that doing 7, 8 and 9 wouldn't be feasable (after all, he's not getting younger, none of us are :P).

He recently revealed the news that he's going to retire from film-making, and has named Kathleen Kennedy to take the reigns of his Lucasfilm Empire, so there's no way we'll ever see a post-Jedi trilogy.