George Lucas

George Lucas is an American motion-picture director, producer, and screenwriter who created several of the most popular films in history. Lucas is best known for writing and directing Star Wars and creating the Indiana Jones series, as well as founding the Industrial Light & Magic special effects company. He is considered to be one of the most significant figures of the 20th-century New Hollywood movement, and a pioneer of the modern blockbuster. Despite this, he has remained an independent filmmaker away from Hollywood for most of his career. Lucas is also known for his collaboration with composer John Williams, who was recommended to him by Steven Spielberg, and with whom he has worked for all the films in both of these franchises. He also produced and wrote a variety of films and television series through Lucasfilm between the 1970s and the 2010s.
In addition to his career as a filmmaker, Lucas has founded and supported multiple philanthropic organizations and campaigns dedicated to education and the arts, including the George Lucas Educational Foundation, which has been noted as a key supporter in the creation of the federal E-Rate program to provide broadband funding to schools and libraries, and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a forthcoming art museum in Los Angeles developed with his wife, Mellody Hobson.
== Early work ==
The son of a small-town stationer and a mother who was often hospitalized for long periods for ill health, Lucas was an early reader of classic adventure stories such as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, an avid collector of comic books, and a keen student of history. He became interested in filmmaking while in high school. He was also a car-racing fanatic as a teenager until a near-fatal crash at age 18 convinced him to give up the sport. Lucas’s interest in moviemaking was encouraged by cinematographer Haskell Wexler. In 1966 Lucas received a bachelor’s degree from the film department of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. While there, future director John Milius, a classmate, introduced Lucas to the work of Japanese director Kurosawa Akira, who would be an important influence on Lucas’s work. Lucas made several highly acclaimed student films, including the futuristic parable Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB, which took first prize at the National Student Film Festival in 1965. He served a six-month internship in 1967 at Warner Brothers, where he assisted Francis Ford Coppola on Finian’s Rainbow (1968). He followed that experience by shooting a “making-of” documentary about Franics Ford Coppola’s The Rain People (1969). Lucas also shot a portion of the documentary Gimme Shelter (1970), about the violent Rolling Stones concert at the 1969 Altamont Festival, for Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin.
Warner Brothers–Seven Arts signed Lucas to direct a feature-length version of his prizewinning student film, with Coppola executive-producing and Robert Duvall and Maggie McOmie starring as the illicit lovers. A grim fantasy about a robotized, dehumanized society in the distant future, THX 1138 (1971) was released to respectful reviews, although its obvious debt to George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-four and overly deliberate pace kept it from being embraced too enthusiastically by either critics or audiences. The film also was one of the first made through Coppola’s American Zoetrope studio, which would go on to create some of the most-memorable films of the 1970s and ’80s.
In 1971 Lucas formed the production company Lucasfilm Ltd., which eventually contained a number of divisions, including Industrial Light & Magic (ILM, established 1975), which was regarded as the most prestigious special-effects workshop in American film. His second film, American Graffiti (1973), a sympathetic recollection of adolescent American life in the early 1960s, was a surprise success at the box office and was redolent of his youth as a Modesto hot-rodding enthusiast. Shot in less than a month for well under a million dollars, American Graffiti became one of the top grossing films of the decade—and with its modest cast of newcomers (including Richard Dreyfuss, erstwhile child star Ron Howard, and Harrison Ford in a small role) may have been among the most profitable as well.
== Star Wars ==
The success of American Graffiti enabled Lucas to finance a project that had been dear to his heart for some time. Science fiction had traditionally been a poor box-office performer, with such rare exceptions as Planet of the Apes (1968) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) only proving the rule. However, with Star Wars (1977), which he also wrote, Lucas eschewed the high-tech dystopian allegory then current in science-fiction films in favour of space opera synthesized with vintage Hollywood swashbucklers and frontier adventures. A space opera set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” the film centres on Luke Skywalker (played by Mark Hamill), a young man who finds himself embroiled in an interplanetary war between an authoritarian empire and rebel forces. Skywalker, his mentor the wise Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi (Sir Alec Guinness), and the opportunistic smuggler Han Solo (Ford) are tasked with saving Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) from captivity on the Death Star, a massive space station commanded by the menacing Darth Vader, whose deep, mechanically augmented voice (contributed by James Earl Jones) became instantly iconic. At the core of the film and the series it initiated are the Jedi Knights—a group of either benevolent or malevolent warriors who harness and manipulate the Force, an all-pervasive spiritual essence that holds in balance the forces of good and evil—and Skywalker’s quest to join their ranks. Star Wars, which borrowed heavily from the ideas of mythographer Joseph Campbell and from the story of Kurosawa’s Kakushi-toride no san-akunin (1958; The Hidden Fortress), was immediately popular and went on to become the top-grossing motion picture in history. It was the first of Lucas’s films to be made with a generous budget, which he extended by shooting on soundstages in England, then far less expensive than Hollywood. The film’s success spawned a host of other science-fiction films using the same special-effects technologies developed at ILM that Star Wars had used so effectively.
Star Wars quickly became the highest-grossing film of all time, displaced five years later by Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. After the success of American Graffiti and prior to the beginning of filming on Star Wars, Lucas was encouraged to renegotiate for a higher fee for writing and directing Star Wars than the US$150,000 agreed. He declined to do so, instead negotiating for advantage in some of the as-yet-unspecified parts of his contract with Fox, in particular, ownership of licensing and merchandising rights (for novelizations, clothing, toys, etc.) and contractual arrangements for sequels. Lucasfilm has earned hundreds of millions of dollars from licensed games, toys, and collectibles created for the franchise. The original Star Wars film went through a tumultuous production, and during editing, Lucas suffered chest pains initially feared to be a heart attack, but actually a fit of hypertension and exhaustion. The effort that Lucas exerted during post-production for the film, and its subsequent sequels, caused strains on his relationship with his wife Marcia Lucas, and was a contributing factor to their divorce at the end of the trilogy. The success of the first Star Wars film also resulted in more attention focused on Lucas, both positive and negative, attracting wealth and fame, but also many people who wanted Lucas's financial backing or just to threaten him.
== The growth of Lucasfilm Ltd. ==
=== Hiatus from directing, Indiana Jones ===
Following the release of the first Star Wars film, Lucas worked extensively as a writer and producer, including on the many Star Wars spinoffs made for film, television and other media. Lucas acted as executive producer for the next two Star Wars films, commissioning Irvin Kershner to direct The Empire Strikes Back and Richard Marquand to direct Return of the Jedi, while receiving a story credit on the former and sharing a screenwriting credit with Lawrence Kasdan on the latter. Lucas also gave away his screenwriting credit out of great respect for Leigh Brackett for The Empire Strikes Back after her death from cancer. He also acted as story writer and executive producer on the first four Indiana Jones films, which his colleague and good friend Steven Spielberg directed.
Craig Barron, who worked at ILM as part of the matte painting department, told Star Wars Insider that Lucas liked to spend time with the department's painters and often spoke of what movies he wanted to make. According to Barron, Lucas had wanted to make a film about Alexander the Great, but this film was ultimately never produced. Projects where Lucas was credited as executive producer and sometimes story writer in this period include Kurosawa's Kagemusha (1980), John Korty's Twice Upon a Time (1983), Ewoks: Caravan of Courage (1984), Ewoks: Battle for Endor (1985), Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), Jim Henson's Labyrinth (1986), Ron Howard's Willow (1988), Don Bluth's The Land Before Time (1988), and the Indiana Jones television prequel spinoff The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992–93). There were unsuccessful projects, however, including More American Graffiti (1979), Willard Huyck's Howard the Duck (1986), which was the biggest flop of Lucas's career, Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) and Radioland Murders (1994) directed by Mel Smith.
The animation studio Pixar was founded in 1979 as the Graphics Group, one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm. Pixar's early computer graphics research resulted in a digital film The Adventures of André & Wally B. and groundbreaking effects in films such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Young Sherlock Holmes, and the group was purchased in 1986 by Steve Jobs shortly after he left Apple Computer. Jobs paid Lucas $5 million and put $5 million as capital into the company. The sale reflected Lucas's desire to stop the cash flow losses from his seven-year research projects associated with new entertainment technology tools, as well as his company's new focus on creating entertainment rather than tools. As of June 1983, Lucas was worth $60 million, but he met cash-flow difficulties following his divorce that year, concurrent with the sudden dropoff in revenues from Star Wars licenses following the theatrical run of Return of the Jedi. At this point, Lucas had no desire to return to Star Wars, and had unofficially canceled the sequel trilogy.
Lucas, formerly a member of Writers Guild of America West, left and maintained financial core status in 1981. Also in 1983, Lucas and Tomlinson Holman founded the audio company THX. The company was formerly owned by Lucasfilm and contains equipment for stereo, digital, and theatrical sound for films, and music. Skywalker Sound and Industrial Light & Magic, are the sound and visual effects subdivisions of Lucasfilm, while Lucasfilm Games, later renamed LucasArts, produces products for the gaming industry.
=== Return to directing, Star Wars and Indiana Jones ===
Having lost much of his fortune in a divorce settlement in 1987, Lucas was hesitant on making additional Star Wars features. However, the prequels, which were still only a series of ideas partially pulled from his original drafts of "The Star Wars", continued to tantalize him with technical possibilities that would make it worthwhile to revisit his older material. When Star Wars became popular once again, in the wake of Dark Horse's comic book line and Timothy Zahn's trilogy of spin-off novels, Lucas realized that there was still a large audience. His children were older, and with the explosion of CGI technology he began to consider directing once again.
By 1993, it was announced, in Variety among other sources, that Lucas would be making the prequels. He began penning more to the story, indicating that the series would be a tragic one, examining Anakin Skywalker's fall to the dark side. Lucas also began to change the status of the prequels relative to the originals; at first, they were supposed to be a "filling-in" of history tangential to the originals, but now he saw that they could form the beginning of one long story that started with Anakin's childhood and ended with his death. This was the final step towards turning the film series into a "Saga". In 1994, Lucas began work on the screenplay of the first prequel, tentatively titled Episode I: The Beginning. In 1997, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Star Wars, Lucas restored the original trilogy, also making numerous modifications using newly available digital technology to bring them closer to his original vision. The films were re-released in theaters as the "Special Edition". The trilogy received further modifications and restorations for DVD releases in 2004, Blu-ray releases in 2011 and 4K releases released in 2019. Additionally, Lucas released a director's cut of THX 1138 in 2004, with the film re-cut and containing a number of CGI additions.
The first Star Wars prequel was finished and released in 1999 as Episode I – The Phantom Menace, which would be the first film Lucas had directed in over two decades. Following the release of the first prequel, Lucas announced that he would also be directing the next two, and began working on Episode II. The first draft of Episode II was completed just weeks before principal photography, and Lucas hired Jonathan Hales, a writer from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, to polish it. It was completed and released in 2002 as Attack of the Clones. The final prequel, Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, began production in 2002 and was released in 2005. Numerous older fans and critics considered the prequels inferior to the original trilogy, though they were box office successes and popular with younger fans. In 2004, Lucas reflected that his transition from independent to corporate filmmaker mirrored the story of Star Wars character Darth Vader in some ways, but concluded he was glad to be able to make his films the way he wanted to. Lucas collaborated with Jeff Nathanson as a writer of the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, directed by Steven Spielberg. Similar to the Star Wars prequels, the reception was mixed with fans and critics alike. From 2008 to 2014, Lucas also served as the creator and executive producer for a second Star Wars animated series on Cartoon Network, Star Wars: The Clone Wars which premiered with a feature film of the same name before airing its first episode. The supervising director for this animated series was Dave Filoni, who was chosen by Lucas and closely collaborated with him on its development. This series bridged the events between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, and featured the last Star Wars stories in which Lucas was involved in a major way. In 2012, Lucas self-funded and served as executive producer for Red Tails, a war film based on the exploits of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. He also took over directing of reshoots while director Anthony Hemingway worked on other projects.
== Semi-retirement ==
In January 2012, Lucas announced his retirement from producing large blockbuster films, and instead re-focusing his career on smaller, independently budgeted features. In June 2012, it was announced that producer Kathleen Kennedy, a long-term collaborator with Steven Spielberg and a producer of the Indiana Jones films, had been appointed as co-chair of Lucasfilm Ltd. It was reported that Kennedy would work alongside Lucas, who would remain chief executive and serve as co-chairman for at least one year, after which she would succeed him as the company's sole leader. With the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney, Lucas is currently Disney's second-largest single shareholder, after the estate of Steve Jobs.
Lucas worked as a creative consultant on the Star Wars sequel trilogy's first film, The Force Awakens. Lucas's involvement included attending early story meetings; according to Lucas, "I mostly say, 'You can't do this. You can do that.' You know, 'The cars don't have wheels. They fly with antigravity.' There's a million little pieces ... I know all that stuff." Lucas's son Jett told The Guardian that his father was "very torn" about having sold the rights to the franchise, despite having hand-picked Abrams to direct, and that his father was "there to guide" but that "he wants to let it go and become its new generation." Among the materials turned over to the production team were story treatments Lucas developed when he considered creating Episodes VII–IX himself; in January 2015, Lucas stated that Disney had discarded his story ideas. The Force Awakens, directed by J. J. Abrams, was released on December 18, 2015. Kathleen Kennedy produced the film and its sequels. The new sequel trilogy was jointly produced by Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company, which had acquired Lucasfilm in 2012. During an interview with talk show host and journalist Charlie Rose that aired on December 24, 2015, Lucas likened his decision to sell Lucasfilm to Disney to a divorce and outlined the creative differences between him and the producers of The Force Awakens. Lucas went on to say that he needed to support the company and its employees who were going to suffer financially. Lucas described the previous six Star Wars films as his "children" and defended his vision for them, while criticizing The Force Awakens for having a "retro feel", saying: "I worked very hard to make them completely different, with different planets, with different spaceships – you know, to make it new." Lucas also drew some criticism and subsequently apologized for his remark likening Disney to "white slavers".
In 2015, Lucas wrote the CGI film Strange Magic, his first musical. The film was produced at Skywalker Ranch. Gary Rydstrom directed the movie. At the same time the sequel trilogy was announced, a fifth installment of the Indiana Jones series also entered pre-development phase with Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg set to return. Lucas originally did not specify whether the selling of Lucasfilm would affect his involvement with the film. In October 2016, Lucas announced his decision to not be involved in the story of the film but would remain an executive producer. In 2016, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first film of a Star Wars anthology series was released. It told the story of the rebels who stole the plans for the Death Star featured in the original Star Wars film, and it was reported that Lucas liked it more than The Force Awakens. The Last Jedi, the second film in the sequel trilogy, was released in 2017; Lucas described the film as "beautifully made". Lucas has had cursory involvement with Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), the Star Wars streaming series The Mandalorian, and the premiere of the eighth season of Game of Thrones. Lucas met with J. J. Abrams before the latter began writing the script to the sequel trilogy's final film, The Rise of Skywalker, which was released in 2019.
== Other ventures ==
=== ILM ===
Lucas founded Industrial Light & Magic in 1975, he wanted his 1977 film Star Wars to include visual effects that had never been seen on film before. After discovering that the in-house effects department at 20th Century Fox was no longer operational, Lucas approached Douglas Trumbull, best known for the effects on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Silent Running (1972). Trumbull declined as he was already committed to working on Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), but suggested his assistant John Dykstra to Lucas. Dykstra brought together a small team of college students, artists, and engineers and set them up in a warehouse in Van Nuys, California. After seeing the map for the location was zoned as light industrial, Lucas named the group Industrial Light and Magic, which became the Special Visual Effects department on Star Wars. Alongside Dykstra, other leading members of the original ILM team were Ken Ralston, Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Robert Blalack, Joe Johnston, Phil Tippett, Steve Gawley, Lorne Peterson and Paul Huston.
=== Lucas Museum of Narrative Art ===
By June 2013, Lucas was considering establishing a museum, the Lucas Cultural Arts Museum, to be built on Crissy Field near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, which would display his collection of illustrations and pop art, with an estimated value of more than $1 billion. Lucas offered to pay the estimated $300 million cost of constructing the museum, and would endow it with $400 million when it opened, eventually adding an additional $400 million to its endowment. After being unable to reach an agreement with The Presidio Trust, Lucas turned to Chicago. A potential lakefront site on Museum Campus in Chicago was proposed in May 2014. By June 2014, Chicago had been selected, pending approval of the Chicago Plan Commission, which was granted. The museum project was renamed the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. On June 24, 2016, Lucas announced that he was abandoning his plans to locate the museum in Chicago, due to a lawsuit by a local preservation group, Friends of the Parks, and would instead build the museum in California. On January 17, 2017, Lucas announced that an eleven-acre campus with green space and the museum's five-story 300,000 square foot building will be constructed over what was a parking lot in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California. It is due to be completed in 2025.
== Awards and honors ==
In 1977, Lucas was awarded the Inkpot Award. The American Film Institute awarded Lucas its Life Achievement Award on June 9, 2005. This was shortly after the release of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, about which he joked stating that, since he views the entire Star Wars series as one film, he could actually receive the award now that he had finally "gone back and finished the movie."
Lucas was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Directing and Writing for American Graffiti and Star Wars. He received the academy's Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1991. He appeared at the 79th Academy Awards ceremony in 2007 with Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola to present the Best Director award to their friend Martin Scorsese. During the speech, Spielberg and Coppola talked about the joy of winning an Oscar, making fun of Lucas, who has not won a competitive Oscar. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted Lucas in 2006, its second "Film, Television, and Media" contributor, after Spielberg. The Discovery Channel named him one of the 100 "Greatest Americans" in September 2008. Lucas served as Grand Marshal for the Tournament of Roses Parade and made the ceremonial coin toss at the Rose Bowl, New Year's Day 2007. In 2009, he was one of 13 California Hall of Fame inductees in The California Museum's yearlong exhibit.
In July 2013, Lucas was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama for his contributions to American cinema. In October 2014, Lucas received Honorary Membership of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. In August 2015, Lucas was inducted as a Disney Legend, and on December 6, 2015, he was an honoree at the Kennedy Center Honors. In 2021, coinciding with Lucasfilm's 50th anniversary, an action figure of Lucas in stormtrooper disguise was released as part of Hasbro's Star Wars: The Black Series. In May 2024, Lucas will be given the Honorary Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It is considered one of the highest recognitions in the film industry.
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