Production

[edit]

Development

[edit]

George Lucas had the idea for a space opera prior to 1971.^[1] According to Mark Hamill, Lucas wanted to make it before his 1973 coming-of-age film American Graffiti.^[2] His original plan was to adapt the Flash Gordon space adventure comics and serials into films, having been fascinated by them since he was young.^[3] Lucas attempted to purchase the rights, but they had already been acquired by producer Dino De Laurentiis.^[4] Lucas then discovered that Flash Gordon was inspired by the John Carter of Mars book series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of Tarzan. Burroughs, in turn, had been influenced by Gulliver on Mars, a 1905 science fantasy written by Edwin Arnold. Lucas took the science fantasy concept and began developing what he would call a "space fantasy".^[5]

In May 1971, Lucas persuaded the head of United Artists, David Picker, to take a chance on two of his film ideas: American Graffiti and the space opera.^[6] Although Lucas signed a two-picture deal, the studio ultimately declined to produce Graffiti. Universal Pictures picked it up, and Lucas spent the next two years making the coming-of-age film, which was immensely successful.^[6] In January 1973, he began working on the space opera full-time.^[5] He began the process by inventing odd names for characters and places. By the time the screenplay was finalized he had discarded many of the names, but several made it into the final script and later sequels.^[7] He used his early notes to compile a two-page synopsis titled Journal of the Whills, which chronicled the tale of CJ Thorpe, an apprentice "Jedi-Bendu", who was being trained by the legendary Mace Windy.^[8] He felt that this story was too difficult to understand, however.^[9]

Lucas began writing a 13-page treatment called The Star Wars on April 17, 1973, which had narrative parallels with Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress.^[10] He later explained that Star Wars is not a story about the future, but rather a "fantasy" that has more in common with the Brothers Grimm than the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. He said his motivation for making the film was to give young people an "honest, wholesome fantasy life," of the kind his generation had. He hoped it would offer "the romance, the adventure, and the fun that used to be in practically every movie".^[11]

While impressed with the innocence of the story and the sophistication of Lucas' fictional world, United Artists declined to fund the project. Lucas and Gary Kurtz, a producer, then presented the treatment to Universal Pictures, the studio that financed American Graffiti. Universal agreed it could be a successful venture, but declined to fund it, citing doubts about Lucas' ability to execute his vision.^[2] Kurtz claimed the studio's rejection was primarily due to Universal head Lew Wasserman's low opinion of science fiction, and the general unpopularity of the genre at the time.^[12] Francis Ford Coppola subsequently brought the project to a division of Paramount Pictures named the Directors Company he ran with fellow directors Peter Bogdanovich and William Friedkin, but Friedkin questioned Lucas' ability to direct the film, and both Friedkin and Bogdanovich declined to finance it.^[13] Walt Disney Productions also turned down the project.^[14]

Star Wars was accepted by Twentieth Century-Fox in June 1973. The president of the studio, Alan Ladd Jr., did not grasp the technical side of the project, but believed in Lucas' talent. Lucas later stated that Ladd invested in him, not in the film.^[15] The Fox deal gave Lucas $150,000 (equivalent to $1,100,000 in 2025) to write and direct the film.^[16] In August 1973, American Graffiti opened to massive success, which afforded Lucas the necessary leverage to renegotiate the deal and gain control of merchandising and sequel rights.^[7]^[15]^: 19

Writing

[edit]

It's the flotsam and jetsam from the period when I was twelve years old. All the books and films and comics that I liked when I was a child. The plot is simple—good against evil—and the film is designed to be all the fun things and fantasy things I remember. The word for this movie is fun.

—George Lucas, 1977^[17]

Since commencing the writing process in January 1973, Lucas wrote four different screenplays for Star Wars, searching for "just the right ingredients, characters and storyline."^[5] By May 1974, he had expanded the original treatment into a full, 132-page rough draft, which included elements such as the Sith, the Death Star, and a general named Annikin Starkiller.^[15]^: 14^[18] He then changed Starkiller to an adolescent boy, and shifted the general—who came from a family of dwarfs—into a supporting role.^[15]^[19] Lucas envisioned the Corellian smuggler, Han Solo, as a large, green-skinned monster with gills. He based Chewbacca on his Alaskan Malamute dog, Indiana. She would sit in the passenger seat of his car while he was driving, and he referred to her as his "co-pilot".^[20]^[21] The dog's name would later be given to the character Indiana Jones.^[19]^[22]

Lucas completed a second draft in January 1975 entitled Adventures of the Starkiller, Episode One: The Star Wars. He had made substantial simplifications and introduced the young, farm-dwelling hero as Luke Starkiller. In this draft, Luke had several brothers. Annikin became Luke's father, a wise Jedi Knight who played a minor role at the end of the story. Early versions of the characters Han Solo and Chewbacca were present, and closely resemble those seen in the finished film.^[23] This draft introduced a mystical energy field called "The Force"; the concept of a Jedi turning to the dark side; and a Jedi who was the first to turn, and who subsequently trained the Sith. The script also included a Jedi Master with a son who trains under his father's friend.^[18]^[24] This version was more a fairy tale quest than the action-filled adventure story of the previous draft, and ended with a text crawl that previewed the next story in the series. According to Lucas, the second draft was over 200 pages long, which led him to split up the story into multiple films.^[a] This division caused problems with the first film; Lucas had to use the ending of Return of the Jedi for Star Wars, which resulted in a Death Star being included in both films.^[28]^[29]^[b]

While writing a third draft, Lucas claims to have been influenced by comics,^[34] J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit,^[35]^[36] Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces,^[37] James George Frazer's The Golden Bough,^[38] and Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment. The writer Michael Kaminski has objected to Lucas' claim regarding The Uses of Enchantment, arguing that it was not released until after Star Wars was filmed.^[c] Kaminski also claims that Campbell's influence on Star Wars has been exaggerated by Lucas and others, and that Lucas' second draft was "closer to Campbell's structure" than the third draft.^[39]

In February 1975, Twentieth-Century Fox granted the film a budget of $5 million (equivalent to $30 million in 2025 dollars), which was later increased to $8.25 million (equivalent to $49 million).^[15]^: 17:30 Lucas then started writing with a budget in mind. He conceived the cheap, "used" look of much of the film, and—with Fox having just shut down its special effects department—reduced the number of complex special effects shots called for by the script.^[40] The completed third draft of the screenplay, dated August 1, 1975, was titled The Star Wars From the Adventures of Luke Starkiller. This version had most of the elements of the final plot, with only some differences in the characters and settings. It presented Luke as an only child whose father was already dead, and who was cared for by a man named Ben Kenobi.^[18] This script would be rewritten into a fourth and final draft, dated January 1, 1976, and titled The Adventures of Luke Starkiller as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars. Lucas' friends Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck helped him revise the fourth draft into the final pre-production script.^[41]

Lucas finished the screenplay in March 1976, when the crew started filming. During production, he changed Luke's surname from Starkiller to Skywalker,^[d] and changed the title first to The Star Wars, and then, finally, to Star Wars.^[15]^[18] For the film's opening crawl, Lucas originally wrote a composition of six paragraphs with four sentences each.^[16]^[44] He showed the crawl to his friend, the director Brian De Palma, who said it was incomprehensible and far too lengthy.^[45]^[46] De Palma and the screenwriter Jay Cocks helped edit the crawl into its final form, which contains only four sentences.^[45]^[47]

Casting

[edit]

Left to right: Alec Guinness (pictured in 1973), Anthony Daniels (2011), and Peter Mayhew (2015)

Lucas had a preference for casting unknown or relatively unknown actors, which led him to select Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher for leading roles.^[15] Hamill was cast as Luke Skywalker over Robby Benson, Robert Englund, William Katt, Kurt Russell, and Charles Martin Smith,^[e] while Fisher was cast as Princess Leia over Karen Allen, Amy Irving, Terri Nunn, Cindy Williams, and Linda Purl.^[51]^[52] Jodie Foster was offered the role, but turned it down because she was under contract with Disney.^[53]^[54] Koo Stark was also considered for Leia, but was instead cast as Luke's friend Camie Marstrap, a character that was eventually cut from the film.^[55]^[56]

Lucas initially resisted casting Harrison Ford as Han Solo, since Ford had previously worked with Lucas on American Graffiti, and was therefore not unknown. Instead, Lucas asked Ford to assist with auditions by reading lines with other actors. He was eventually won over by Ford, and cast him as Han over many other actors who auditioned, including James Caan, Chevy Chase, Robert De Niro, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Englund, Steve Martin, Bill Murray, Jack Nicholson, Nick Nolte, Burt Reynolds, Kurt Russell, Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta, Glynn Turman, Christopher Walken, and Perry King, who later played Han in the radio series.^[f] Al Pacino turned down the part because he did not understand the script.^[64]

Lucas believed that he needed an established star to play Obi-Wan Kenobi. He considered Peter Cushing for the role, but decided the actor's lean features would be better employed as the villainous Tarkin.^[65] Kurtz felt a strong character actor was required to convey the "stability and gravitas" of Obi-Wan.^[15] Before Alec Guinness was cast, the Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune—who starred in many Akira Kurosawa films—was considered for the role.^[51] His daughter, Mika Kitagawa, said her father had a lot of "samurai pride" and turned down the roles of Obi-Wan and Vader because he thought Star Wars would employ cheap special effects, and would therefore cheapen the image of samurai.^[66] Lucas credited Guinness with inspiring the cast and crew to work harder, which contributed significantly to the completion of filming.^[67] Ford said he admired Guinness' preparation, professionalism and kindness towards the other actors. He recalled Guinness having "a very clear head about how to serve the story."^[15] On top of his salary, Guinness received 2.25% of the film's backend grosses, which made him wealthy later in life.^[68]

Anthony Daniels said he wanted the role of C-3PO after he saw a Ralph McQuarrie concept painting of the character and was struck by the vulnerability in the droid's face.^[g] After casting Daniels for the physical performance, Lucas intended to hire another actor for the droid's voice. According to Daniels, thirty well-established actors auditioned—including Dreyfuss and Mel Blanc—but Daniels received the voice role after one of the actors suggested the idea to Lucas.^[h]

Kenny Baker (R2-D2) and Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) were cast largely due to their height. At 3 feet 8 inches (1.12 m), Baker was offered the role of the diminutive R2-D2 immediately after meeting Lucas. He turned it down multiple times, however, before finally accepting it.^[74] R2-D2's beeps and squeaks were made by the film's sound designer, Ben Burtt, by imitating baby noises, recording his voice over an intercom, and finally mixing the sounds together using a synthesizer.^[75] Mayhew initially auditioned for Vader, but David Prowse was cast instead. When Lucas and Kurtz saw Mayhew's 7-foot-3-inch (2.21 m) stature, they quickly cast him as Chewbacca. Mayhew modeled his performance on the mannerisms of animals he observed in public zoos.^[15]^[76]^[77]

Prowse was originally offered the role of Chewbacca, but turned it down, as he wanted to play the villain.^[78] Prowse portrayed Vader physically, but Lucas felt his West Country English accent was inappropriate for the character, and selected James Earl Jones for Vader's voice.^[29] Lucas considered Orson Welles for the voice role, but was concerned his voice would be too familiar to audiences. Audiences and critics, however, immediately recognized Jones' voice in the film.^[79]^[80]^[81] Jones was uncredited as Vader in Star Wars films until 1983,^[i] although he was credited in the 1978 television special, Star Wars Holiday Special.^[83]^[84]

Design

[edit]

During pre-production, Lucas recruited several conceptual designers: Colin Cantwell, who visualized the initial spacecraft models; Alex Tavoularis, who created storyboard sketches from early scripts; and Ralph McQuarrie, who created conceptual images of characters, costumes, props, and scenery.^[5] McQuarrie's paintings helped studio executives visualize the film, which positively influenced their decision to fund the project.^[85]^[86] His artwork also set the visual tone for Star Wars^[5] and the rest of the original trilogy.^[87]

The trouble with the future in most futurist movies is that it always looks new and clean and shiny ... What is required for true credibility is a used future.

—George Lucas on the aesthetic of Star Wars^[5]

Lucas wanted to create props and sets that had never before been used in science-fiction films. He hired as production designers John Barry and Roger Christian, who were then working on the film Lucky Lady (1975). Christian remembers that Lucas did not want anything in Star Wars to stand out, and wanted everything to look "real and used." In this "used future" aesthetic, all devices, ships, and buildings related to Tatooine and the rebels look aged and dirty, and the rebel ships look cobbled together in contrast to the Empire's sleeker designs.^[88]^[89] Lucas believed this aesthetic would lend credibility to the film's fictional places, and Christian was enthusiastic about this approach.^[90]^[91]

Barry and Christian started working with Lucas before Star Wars was funded by Fox. For several months, in a studio in Kensal Rise, England, they planned the creation of props and sets with very little money. According to Christian, the Millennium Falcon set was the most difficult to build. He wanted the interior of the ship to look like a submarine, and used inexpensive airplane scrap metal to achieve the desired effect.^[91]^[92] Set construction later moved to Elstree Studios, where Barry created thirty sets. All nine sound stages at Elstree were needed to house the planets, starships, caves, control rooms, cantinas, and Death Star corridors. The rebel hangar was so massive it had to be built at nearby Shepperton Studios, which contained Europe's largest sound stage at the time.^[93]

Filming

[edit]

In 1975, Lucas founded the visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) after discovering that Fox's visual effects department had been shut down. ILM began its work on Star Wars in a warehouse in Van Nuys, California. Most of the visual effects used pioneering digital motion control photography developed by John Dykstra and his team, which created the illusion of size by employing small models and slowly moving cameras. The technology is now known as the Dykstraflex system.^[j]

Visually, Lucas wanted Star Wars to have the "ethereal quality" of a fairy tale, but also "an alien look." He hoped to achieve "the seeming contradiction of [the] strange graphics of fantasy combined with the feel of a documentary."^[5] His first choice for cinematographer was Geoffrey Unsworth, who had worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unsworth initially accepted the job, but eventually withdrew to work on the Vincente Minnelli-directed A Matter of Time (1976).^[12] Unsworth was replaced by Gilbert Taylor, who had overseen photography for Dr. Strangelove and A Hard Day's Night (both 1964). Lucas admired Taylor's work on both films, describing them as "eccentrically photographed pictures with a strong documentary flavor."^[97]

Once filming was under way, Lucas and Taylor had many disputes.^[12] Lucas' lighting suggestions were rejected by Taylor, who believed Lucas was overstepping his boundaries by giving specific instructions, sometimes even moving lights and cameras himself. After Fox executives complained about the soft-focus visual style of the film, Taylor changed his approach, which infuriated Lucas.^[98] Kurtz said that Lucas' inability to delegate tasks resulted from his history directing low-budget films, which required him to be involved with all aspects of the production.^[12] Taylor claimed that Lucas avoided contact with him, which motivated the cinematographer to make his own decisions about how to shoot the film.^[99]^[100]

Hotel Sidi Driss, the underground building used as Luke's Tatooine home

Originally, Lucas envisioned Tatooine as a jungle planet, and Kurtz traveled to the Philippines to scout locations.^[101] However, the thought of spending months filming in the jungle made Lucas uncomfortable, so he made Tatooine a desert planet instead.^[11] Kurtz then researched various desert locales around the globe. He ultimately decided that Southern Tunisia, on the edge of the Sahara, would make an ideal Tatooine. Principal photography began in Chott el Djerid in March 1976. Meanwhile, a construction crew in nearby Tozeur spent eight weeks creating additional Tatooine locations.^[97] The scenes of Luke's Tatooine home were filmed at the Hotel Sidi Driss, in Matmata.^[97] Additional Tatooine scenes were shot at Death Valley in the United States.^[102]

The filmmakers experienced many problems in Tunisia. Production fell behind schedule in the first week due to malfunctioning props and electronic breakdowns.^[k] The radio-controlled R2-D2 models functioned poorly.^[11] The left leg of Daniels' C-3PO costume shattered, injuring his foot.^[15]^[105] At the end of his first day of filming in March, Daniels was covered in scars and scratches from the costume; this was the first and only time he wore the costume for an entire day.^[106]^[107]^[l] A rare winter rainstorm struck the country, which further disrupted filming.^[110] After two and a half weeks in Tunisia, production moved to Elstree Studios in London for interior scenes.^[m]

Kurtz has described Lucas as a shy loner who does not enjoy working with a large cast and crew. According to Fisher, he gave very little direction to the actors, and when he did, it usually consisted of the words "faster" and "more intense".^[15] Laws in Britain stipulated that filming had to finish by 5:30 pm, unless Lucas was in the middle of a shot, in which case he could ask the crew to stay an extra 15 minutes.^[16] However, his requests were usually turned down. Most of the British crew considered Star Wars a children's film, and the actors sometimes did not take the project seriously. Kenny Baker later confessed that he thought the film would be a failure.^[15]

According to Taylor, it was impossible to light the Elstree sets in the conventional way. He was forced to break open the walls, ceilings and floors, placing quartz lamps inside the openings he created. This lighting system gave Lucas the ability to shoot in almost any direction without extensive relighting.^[110] In total, filming in Britain took fourteen and a half weeks.^[112]

While visiting an English travel agency, Lucas saw a poster depicting Tikal, Guatemala, and decided to use the location for the moon Yavin 4.^[113] The scenes of the rebel base on Yavin were filmed in the local Mayan temples. The animation of the Death Star plans shown at the base were created by the computer programmer Larry Cuba, using the GRASS programming language. It is the only digital computer animation utilized in the original version of Star Wars.^[114] The visual simulation of Yavin 4 orbiting its mother planet was created on the Scanimate analog computer. All the other computer monitors and targeting displays in the film featured simulated computer graphics, which were generated using pre-digital animation methods, such as hand-drawn backlit animation.^[115]^[116]

Although the character Obi-Wan Kenobi did not die in the final version of the script, Guinness disliked the character's dialogue so much that he allegedly begged Lucas to kill him off.^[117] Lucas, however, claimed he added Obi-Wan's death because the character served no purpose after his duel with Vader.^[118]^[119]

The screenplay originally featured a human Jabba the Hutt, but the character was removed due to budget and time constraints.^[75] The idea of Jabba being an alien did not arise until work began on the 1979 Star Wars re-release.^[120] Lucas would later claim he had wanted to superimpose a stop-motion creature over a human actor, a feat he would later accomplish with computer-generated imagery (CGI) for the 1997 Special Edition.^[121]^[122] According to Greedo actor Paul Blake, his character was created as a result of Lucas needing to cut the Jabba scene.^[123]

At Fox, Alan Ladd endured scrutiny from board members over the film's complex screenplay and rising budget.^[15]^[104] After the filmmakers requested more than the original $8 million budget, Kurtz said the executives started worrying. According to Kurtz, the filmmaking team spent two weeks drafting a new budget.^[12] With the project behind schedule, Ladd told Lucas he had to finish production within a week or it would be shut down. The crew split into three units, led by Lucas, Kurtz, and production supervisor Robert Watts. Under the new system, they met the studio's deadline.^[15]^[104]

During production, the cast attempted to make Lucas laugh or smile, as he often appeared depressed. At one point, the project became so demanding that Lucas was diagnosed with hypertension and exhaustion and was warned to reduce his stress level.^[15]^[104] Another obstacle arose when Hamill's face became visibly scarred after a car accident, which restricted the re-shoots featuring Luke.^[104]

Post-production

[edit]

Star Wars was originally slated for release on December 25, 1976, but production delays pushed it back to mid-1977.^[124] Editor John Jympson began cutting the film while Lucas was still filming in Tunisia; as Lucas noted, the editor was in an "impossible position" because Lucas had not explained any of the film's material to him. When Lucas viewed Jympson's rough cut, he felt the editor's selection of takes was questionable.^[125] He felt Jympson did not fully understand the film nor Lucas' style of filmmaking, and he continued to disapprove of Jympson's editing as time went by.^[126] Halfway through production, Lucas fired Jympson and replaced him with Paul Hirsch, Richard Chew, and his then-wife, Marcia Lucas. The new editing team felt Jympson's cut lacked excitement, and they sought to inject more dynamism into the film.^[15]^[127]

Jympson's rough cut of Star Wars (often called the "Lost Cut") differed significantly from the final version. Author David West Reynolds describes Jympson's version as slower paced, and estimates that it contained 30–40% different footage from the final cut. Although most of the differences relate to extended scenes or alternate takes, there were also scenes in this version which were completely removed to accelerate the pace of the narrative.^[128] The most notable of these was a series of scenes from Tatooine, when Luke is first introduced. The scenes depicted Luke's everyday life among his friends in the city of Anchorhead, and showed how their lives are affected by the space battle above the planet. These scenes also introduced Biggs Darklighter, Luke's closest friend who leaves to join the Rebellion.^[129] Hirsch said the scenes were removed because they presented too much information in the first few minutes of the film, and they created too many storylines for the audience to follow.^[130] The removal of the Anchorhead scenes also helped distinguish Star Wars from Lucas' previous film; Alan Ladd called the deleted scenes "American Graffiti in outer space".^[129] Lucas also wanted to shift the narrative focus to C-3PO and R2-D2 at the beginning of the film. He felt that having the first thirty minutes of the film be mainly about robots was a "bold idea."^[131]^[132]

Meanwhile, ILM was struggling to achieve unprecedented special effects. The company had spent half its budget on four shots that Lucas deemed unacceptable.^[104] With hundreds of shots remaining, ILM was forced to finish a year's work in six months. To inspire the visual effects team, Lucas spliced together clips of aerial dogfights from old war films. These kinetic segments helped the team understand his vision for scenes in Star Wars.^[15] The explosion of the Death Star was created by the visual effects artist Bruce Logan and the pyrotechnics expert Joe Viskocil. To simulate an explosion in outer space, Logan pointed a high-speed camera upward at a series of miniature bombs composed of black powder, gasoline, titanium chips and napalm. The camera was surrounded by a sheet of plywood, with a hole cut out for the lens and a sheet of glass covering it.^[n]

Sound designer Ben Burtt created a library of sounds that Lucas referred to as an "organic soundtrack". Blaster sounds were created by modifying the noise of a steel cable being struck while under tension. Lightsaber sound effects were a combination of the hum of movie projector motors and interference caused by a television set on a shieldless microphone. Burtt discovered the interference sound accidentally while searching for a buzzing, sparking sound to add to the projector hum.^[136] For Chewbacca's speech, Burtt combined the sounds of four bears, a badger, a lion, a seal, and a walrus.^[137] He achieved Vader's breathing noise by breathing through the mask of a scuba regulator; this process inspired the idea of Vader being a burn victim.^[138]^[139] The film was mixed in a new six-track stereo layout developed by Dolby Laboratories called "baby boom" that consolidated vocals to the center channel, while the side channels were used to enhance deep bass effects.^[140]

In February 1977, Lucas screened an early cut of the film for Fox executives, several director friends, and Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin of Marvel Comics, who were preparing a Star Wars comic book. The cut had a different crawl from the finished version and used Prowse's voice for Vader. It also lacked most special effects; hand-drawn arrows took the place of blaster beams, and footage of World War II dogfights replaced space battles between TIE fighters and the Millennium Falcon.^[141] Several of Lucas' friends failed to understand the film, and their reactions disappointed Lucas. Marcia Lucas also was unhappy with the early cut. Steven Spielberg enjoyed it, however, and believed the lack of enthusiasm from others was due to the absence of finished special effects. In contrast, Ladd and the other studio executives loved the film; production executive Gareth Wigan described the experience as the most extraordinary day of his life. Lucas, who was accustomed to negative reactions from studio leadership, found the enthusiasm of the Fox executives shocking and rewarding.^[15]^[142]

With the film over budget, Lucas was forced to make artistic compromises to complete it—the last few days of production saw the crew split into three groups to finish filming.^[143] Ladd reluctantly agreed to release an extra $50,000 in funding (equivalent to $270,000 in 2025 dollars).^[144] Star Wars was completed less than a week before its May 25, 1977, release date. With all of the film's elements coming together just in time, Lucas described the work as not so much finished as "abandoned".^[145] Star Wars began production with a budget of $8 million;^[146] the total budget eventually reached $11 million (equivalent to $48 and $62 million, respectively, in 2025).^[147]

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Development

[edit]

George Lucas had the idea for a space opera prior to 1971.^[1] According to Mark Hamill, Lucas wanted to make it before his 1973 coming-of-age film American Graffiti.^[2] His original plan was to adapt the Flash Gordon space adventure comics and serials into films, having been fascinated by them since he was young.^[3] Lucas attempted to purchase the rights, but they had already been acquired by producer Dino De Laurentiis.^[4] Lucas then discovered that Flash Gordon was inspired by the John Carter of Mars book series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of Tarzan. Burroughs, in turn, had been influenced by Gulliver on Mars, a 1905 science fantasy written by Edwin Arnold. Lucas took the science fantasy concept and began developing what he would call a "space fantasy".^[5]

In May 1971, Lucas persuaded the head of United Artists, David Picker, to take a chance on two of his film ideas: American Graffiti and the space opera.^[6] Although Lucas signed a two-picture deal, the studio ultimately declined to produce Graffiti. Universal Pictures picked it up, and Lucas spent the next two years making the coming-of-age film, which was immensely successful.^[6] In January 1973, he began working on the space opera full-time.^[5] He began the process by inventing odd names for characters and places. By the time the screenplay was finalized he had discarded many of the names, but several made it into the final script and later sequels.^[7] He used his early notes to compile a two-page synopsis titled Journal of the Whills, which chronicled the tale of CJ Thorpe, an apprentice "Jedi-Bendu", who was being trained by the legendary Mace Windy.^[8] He felt that this story was too difficult to understand, however.^[9]

Lucas began writing a 13-page treatment called The Star Wars on April 17, 1973, which had narrative parallels with Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress.^[10] He later explained that Star Wars is not a story about the future, but rather a "fantasy" that has more in common with the Brothers Grimm than the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. He said his motivation for making the film was to give young people an "honest, wholesome fantasy life," of the kind his generation had. He hoped it would offer "the romance, the adventure, and the fun that used to be in practically every movie".^[11]

While impressed with the innocence of the story and the sophistication of Lucas' fictional world, United Artists declined to fund the project. Lucas and Gary Kurtz, a producer, then presented the treatment to Universal Pictures, the studio that financed American Graffiti. Universal agreed it could be a successful venture, but declined to fund it, citing doubts about Lucas' ability to execute his vision.^[2] Kurtz claimed the studio's rejection was primarily due to Universal head Lew Wasserman's low opinion of science fiction, and the general unpopularity of the genre at the time.^[12] Francis Ford Coppola subsequently brought the project to a division of Paramount Pictures named the Directors Company he ran with fellow directors Peter Bogdanovich and William Friedkin, but Friedkin questioned Lucas' ability to direct the film, and both Friedkin and Bogdanovich declined to finance it.^[13] Walt Disney Productions also turned down the project.^[14]

Star Wars was accepted by Twentieth Century-Fox in June 1973. The president of the studio, Alan Ladd Jr., did not grasp the technical side of the project, but believed in Lucas' talent. Lucas later stated that Ladd invested in him, not in the film.^[15] The Fox deal gave Lucas $150,000 (equivalent to $1,100,000 in 2025) to write and direct the film.^[16] In August 1973, American Graffiti opened to massive success, which afforded Lucas the necessary leverage to renegotiate the deal and gain control of merchandising and sequel rights.^[7]^[15]^: 19

^ Rinzler 2008, p. 2.
^ ^a ^b Kaminski 2008, p. 63.
^ American Cinematographer 1977, pp. 698, 700.
^ Macek, J.C. III (February 21, 2013). "Abandoned 'Star Wars' Plot Points Episode II: The Force Behind the Scenes". PopMatters. Archived from the original on September 13, 2013. Retrieved December 28, 2018.
^ ^a ^b American Cinematographer 1977, p. 700.
^ ^a ^b Kaminski 2008, Adventures in Filmmaking.
^ ^a ^b Kaminski 2008, The Screenplay Begins.
^ Rinzler 2008, pp. 12–13.
^ Baxter 1999, p. 142.
^ Kaminski 2008, p. 50.
^ Cite error: The named reference Time77p58 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Kurtz, Gary (November 11, 2002). "An Interview with Gary Kurtz". IGN. Archived from the original on May 14, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2024.
^ Guerrasio, Jason (April 21, 2014). "Why William Friedkin Turned Down Star Wars, Only To See It Torpedo His Masterwork". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on April 12, 2015. Retrieved May 10, 2021.
^ Beggs, Scott (December 18, 2015). "How Star Wars Began: As an Indie Film No Studio Wanted to Make". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on May 21, 2023. Retrieved January 23, 2024.
^ ^a ^b Cite error: The named reference Dreams was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ "30 pieces of trivia about Star Wars". BBC. May 23, 2007. Archived from the original on May 12, 2014. Retrieved May 9, 2014.

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