George Lucas: That’s how Star Wars made him rich

shares in this article

George Walton Lucas Junior, or George Lucas as we know him today, was born on May 14, 1944 in Modesto, California, USA. His parents were Dorothy Bomberg Lucas and George Walton Lucas. When he attended Downey High School in 1959, he dreamed of one day being a racing driver – but that dream quickly came to an end. On June 12, 1962, he drove his then-loved car into a tree and nearly got killed.

That car accident marked a turning point in his life: he chose to go to college instead and graduated from Modesto Junior College. He later studied at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television. There he made some short films, which later went into production of the science fiction film “THX 1138”. After earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in film and photography in 1996, he tried his hand at the Air Force as an officer. However, he was rejected there because he already had too many speeding tickets. After that, he was almost drafted into the Vietnam War, but during the preliminary tests Lucas was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. He did not have to inject insulin, but was still found unfit. With that, George Lucas closed this topic too – luckily for many film lovers, because that brought him back to film.

George Lucas’ first steps in the film business

George Lucas returned to university in 1967 as an assistant to seminar leader Gene Peterson. First he was allowed to shoot a documentary about the making of the film “McKenna’s Gold”. He then received a scholarship that allowed him to do an internship at the Warner Brothers film studio. During his internship, Francis Ford Coppola’s musical “The Golden Rainbow” was being filmed. This brought Lucas together with Francis Ford Coppola in 1967. During the internship, George Lucas had little to do and was often bored. Only Coppola saw his true potential and hired him as his assistant. “Never Love A Stranger” was the first feature film on which George Lucas officially assisted. During their collaboration, he also shot a report on Coppola’s work as a filmmaker. George Lucas was also part of the camera crew for the video for the Rolling Stones’ song “Gimme Shelter”. The experiences he made at the beginning of his career and the contacts he was able to make guided him on his way. His contacts from the suburbs, just like growing up there and his love for cars should have a strong influence on his films.

Birth of “Lucasfilm”

However, Coppola was the first to make him big. Lucas and Coppola founded American Zoetrop, a studio independent of Hollywood. Coppola agreed to produce Lucas’ short film THX 1138 as a feature film. With this Lucas had already won a prize at the Third National Student Film Festival 1967-1968. At the same time, George was working on his screenplay for “American Graffiti”. The film took place in his birthplace and showed parallels to his youth. Lucas then founded the film company named after him, Lucasfilm. “American Graffiti” grossed $118 million. Since Lucas had the right to the net income, the film made him a millionaire and he was able to expand his Lucasfilm company.

Now George Lucas made his own ideas. Originally, in 1973 and 1974, the plan was to produce a children’s film whose story took place in space. However, Universal Studios and United Artists did not believe in his project and did not want to produce it. Only 20th Century Fox agreed to produce “Star Wars”. The deal was closed on August 20, 1973. Since Fox was secretly convinced that the film would be a flop, George Lucas was given the licensing and merchandising rights. However, this ultimately made him the most money and turned out to be an excellent deal for George Lucas.

“Star Wars” goes into production

From there, George Lucas’ life only went up. Although he quarreled several times with the studio during the filming of “Star Wars” because he did not stick to the schedule or budget, the first part of the saga already grossed 200 million US dollars in 1977 and was nominated eleven times for an Oscar. While Lucas initially decided to split the story into nine parts and three complexes for financial reasons, customers were already scrambling to get the film’s merchandising after it was released.

On his next projects, Lucas never sat in the director’s chair himself, but was always a producer. How exhausting the production of the first Star Wars film was for Lucas was shown by the fact that he often lost his voice during filming and even suffered from a fainting fit. But he never lost his fun in it. Four films followed within 8 years, all of which were box office hits: two Star Wars episodes – “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi” – as well as the follow-up productions of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in connection with Steven Spielberg – “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”. A revised special edition of the first three parts of the Star Wars saga was even released in 1997, which brought him even more money.

“Star Wars” – a success story

In 1999, more than ten years after the previous Star Wars installment hit theaters, Lucas’ highest-grossing Star Wars film hit theaters, Episode I: The Phantom Menace, grossing a staggering $924.3 million Euro until then the most successful part of the film series.

“Episode II: Attack of the Clones” followed in 2002 and “Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” in 2005. They were particularly criticized: George Lucas paid more attention to the special effects than to the actual story, so the critics.

In order to increase his profits, Lucas released a DVD edition in 2004, which included all previously released Star Wars parts in an edited form, as well as a 3D version of his films. The new technologies also enabled him to publish the animated television series “The Clone Wars”.

Lucas made a huge profit at the age of 68 from the sale of Lucasfilm and associated film rights to Star Wars. In 2012, Lucasfilm went to Disney for $4.05 billion. George Lucas received half of the money in cash and half in Disney stock. He donated $1 billion after the sale of Lucasfilm. For this he founded his own foundation. The thinking behind the sale was that Lucas wanted to bring Star Wars to a new generation of filmmakers.

In 2015, the seventh episode, “Episode VII: The Force Awakens”, produced by Disney, was released in cinemas. Lucas only played an advisory role in the production; he himself only provided a plot outline for the film. As a result, Disney announced that it would release a new episode every two to three years. “Episode VIII: The Last Jedi” followed in 2017. 2019 “Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker” in cinemas. Disney spent around $200 million to produce the ninth Star Wars film, which resulted in box office earnings of $1.06 billion. This makes Star Wars Episode IX the third highest-grossing film in the series to date, with Episodes VII and VIII taking first and second place respectively.

The films will now be published under the Disney-Lucasfilm brand. Lucasfilm was by no means the only company that Disney bought. They now own the company Pixar, which specializes in computer animation, the comic book publisher Marvel and the well-known US television stations ESPN and ABC.

Two marriages, three children, major awards

George Lucas was married twice. His first marriage, to Marcia Griffin, lasted 14 years. Then Marcia left Lucas for another man. His second marriage was in 2013. He married his longtime girlfriend Mellody Hobson. George Lucas had already adopted three children at this point: Amanda, Katie and Jett.

George Lucas has won many awards in his life, but probably the biggest award was given to him in 2013 by the then US President Barack Obama presented: The National Medal of Arts is a medal honoring directors, artists and singers who have been significant to American life.

Editorial office finanzen.net

Image sources: Denis Makarenko / Shutterstock.com