George Lucas

At 79 years old, George Lucas has this physical status:

George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker and entrepreneur.

Lucas is best known for his creation of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises as well as the creation of Lucasfilm, LucasArts, and Industrial Light & Magic.

Lucasfilm's chairman was chairman before selling it to The Walt Disney Company in 2012. After graduating from the University of Southern California in 1967, Lucas co-founded American Zoetrope with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.

Lucas penned THX 1138 (1971), based on his earlier student paper Electronic Labyrinth, which was a critical success but it was also a financial failure.

His next film project as a writer-director was the film American Graffiti (1973), inspired by his youth in Modesto, California, and released by the newly founded Lucasfilm.

The film was both critically and commercially well-reced, and it received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. Lucas' next film, the epic space opera Star Wars (1977), was a disappointment but it was a surprise success, winning six Academy Awards and sparking a cultural phenomenon.

The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) Lucas created and co-wrote the sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983).

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Last Crusade (1989) and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), with director Steven Spielberg.

Throughout the 1970s and the 2010s, he produced and wrote a number of films and television series through Lucasfilm. Lucas rereleased the Star Wars trilogy in 1997 as part of a limited edition with many updates; home media versions with new updates were available in 2004 and 2011.

He returned to directing with The Phantom Menace (1999), At the Clones (2004), and Revenge of the Sith (2005).

He last worked on the CGI-animated television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008–2020), the war film Red Tails (2012), and the CGI film Strange Magic (2015). Lucas is one of history's most influential filmmakers, and he has been nominated for four Academy Awards.

Adjusted for ticket-price inflation, his films are among the 100 highest-grossing films at the North American box office.

Lucas is regarded as a central figure in the twentieth-century New Hollywood movement.

Early life

Lucas was born and raised in Modesto, California, the son of Dorothy Ellinore Lucas (née Bomberger) and George Walton Lucas Sr., and is of German, Swiss-German, English, Scottish, and distant Dutch and French descent. Lucas' family attended Disneyland during its opening week in July 1955, and the park will remain raving. He was interested in comics and science fiction, as well as television shows such as the Flash Gordon serials. Lucas wanted to be a racer before he began making films, and he spent the majority of his high school years racing on the underground circuit at fairgrounds and hanging out at garages. Lucas was driving his spruced-up Autobianchi Bianchina when another driver broadsided him, flipping his car several times before it crashed into a tree; Lucas's seatbelt snapped, saving his life. However, his lungs were bruised from severe hemorrhaging, and he needed emergency medical attention. This incident prompted him to abandon racing as a career, but it also inspired him to pursue his other passions.

Lucas's father owned a stationery store and wanted George to work for him as he turned 18. Lucas had been planning to attend art school and had predicted that after leaving home he would be a millionaire by the age of 30. Among other things, he studied anthropology, sociology, and literature at Modesto Junior College, where he also studied literature, among other topics. He also started filming car races with an 8-mm camera. Lucas and his partner John Plummer became involved in Canyon Cinema, screenings of underground, avant-garde 16 mm filmmakers such as Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage, and Bruce Conner. Lucas and Plummer also attended classic European films of the time, including Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, François Truffaut's Jules et Jim, and Federico Fellini's 8122. "Now is the time George really started looking," Plummer said. Lucas met Haskell Wexler, another race enthusiast, through his passion for autocross racing. Wexler, who went on to work with Lucas on several occasions, was captivated by Lucas's talent. "George had a sharp eye and he thought visually," he remembered.

Lucas later transferred to the University of Southern California (USC) School of Cinematic Arts on Plummer's suggestion. The University of California was one of the first colleges to have a school devoted to motion picture film. Lucas had a dorm room with Randal Kleiser during his time in the United StatesC. The Dirty Dozen, along with peers such as Walter Murch, Hal Barwood, and John Milius, became a group of film students. Steven Spielberg, a well-known student filmmaker and future Indiana Jones collaborator, became good friends with him. Lucas was greatly influenced by the Filmic Expression course at the university by filmmaker Lester Novros, which concentrated on the non-narrative aspects of Film Form, such as color, light, movement, space, and time. Slavko Vorkapi, a film theoretician who created stunning montage sequences for Hollywood studio features at MGM, RKO, and Paramount, was another inspiration. Vorkapich discussed the cinematic art form's autonomous nature while still emphasizing motion pictures' kinetic energy.

He started working with the United States Air Force as an officer after graduating with a bachelor of fine arts in film in 1967, but was refused immediately due to his numerous speeding tickets. He was later drafted by the Army for military service in Vietnam, but he was turned away from service after medical tests revealed he had diabetes, the disease that killed his paternal grandfather.

Personal life

Marcia Lou Griffin, a film editor who went on to win an Academy Award for her editing on the original Star Wars film, was married in 1969. Amanda Lucas and her husband were born in 1981 and divorced in 1983. Katie Lucas, born in 1988, and her son Jett Lucas were both adopted as a single parent. Lucas himself, as well as his three older siblings, appeared in the three Star Wars prequels. Lucas was in a 1970s relationship with singer Linda Ronstadt after his divorce.

Lucas began dating Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments and chair of DreamWorks Animation in 2006. Lucas and Hobson announced their engagement in January 2013 and married at Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California, on June 22, 2013. They have one daughter together, who was born via surrogate in August 2013.

Lucas was born and raised in a Methodist family. Lucas's fascination in the writings of mythologist Joseph Campbell inspired him, and he would eventually identify strongly with the Eastern religious philosophies that he researched and incorporated into his films, which were a major inspiration for "the Force." Lucas has stated that his faith is "Buddhist Methodist Episcopal." He lives in Marin County.

Lucas is a major collector of American illustrator and painter Norman Rockwell. In an exhibition titled Telling Stories, a series of 57 Rockwell paintings and drawings owned by Lucas, fellow Rockwell collector and film producer Steven Spielberg was on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum from July 2, 2010 to January 2, 2011.

Lucas has confirmed that he is a big fan of Seth MacFarlane's hit TV show Family Guy. When the Family Guy crew needed to parody their scripts, MacFarlane said that Lucasfilm was extremely helpful.

In the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election, Lucas supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

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Film career

Lucas saw several inspiring films in class, including Arthur Lipsett's 21-87 cameraman's cinéma vérité 60 Cycles, Norman McLaren's film, and Claude Jutra's documentaries. Lucas fell in love with pure cinema and became a prolific at producing 16 mm noncharacter visual tone poems and cinéma vérité with such titles as Look at Life, Herbie, and 6-18-67. He was passionate and interested in camerawork and editing, distinguishing himself as a filmmaker rather than a producer, and making abstract visual films that expressed emotions purely by cinema.

Lucas re-enrolled as a USC graduate student film production in 1967. He began working with Verna Fields, where he met his future wife Marcia Griffin and became an expert in the United States Information Agency. Lucas produced Electronic Labyrinth, a short film that earned first prize at the 1967–68 National Student Film Festival, while teaching documentary cinematography to a class of U.S. Navy students being taught documentary cinematography. Lucas was given a Warner Bros. scholarship to attend and work on the production of a film of his choice. He chose Finian's Rainbow (1968), which was being shot by Francis Ford Coppola, who was regarded as a cinema graduate who had "made it" in Hollywood. Lucas was one of the camera operators on the original Rolling Stones concert film Gimme Shelter in 1969.

Lucas co-founded the studio American Zoetrope with Coppola in 1969, aiming to establish a liberating environment for filmmakers to escape the Hollywood studio system's feared oppressive hold. Coppola thought Lucas' Electronic Labyrinth could be turned into his first full-length feature film, but it wasn't a success. Lucasfilm, Ltd., Lucasfilm, Ltd., and filming the popular American Graffiti (1973) followed Lucas.

Lucas then set his sights on adapting Flash Gordon, an adventure series from his childhood that he fondly remembered. When he was unable to get the rights, he began to write an original space adventure that would later be called Star Wars. Despite his success with his previous film, just one studio turned Star Wars down. Alan Ladd, Jr., Jr., was the reason why Fox founder Alan Laddd, Jr., so he was able to secure the film after a string of failures. Both classic sword and sorcery fantasy stories were heavily inspired by Akira Kurosawa's films as well as Spaghetti Westerns.

Star Wars became the highest-grossing film of all time, being displaced five years later by Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is the Extra-Terrestrial. Lucas was advised by the success of American Graffiti and prior to filming on Star Wars that he had to pay a higher price for writing and directing Star Wars than the $150,000 agreed. He refused to do so, instead deciding for advantage in certain aspects of Fox's as-yet-unspecified portions, including the right to licensing and merchandising rights (for novelizations, clothes, toys, etc.) And contractual arrangements for sequels. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been earned by Lucasfilm's licensed games, toys, and collectibles made for the franchise.

Lucas suffered chest pains initially thought to be a heart attack but actually a pattern of hypertension and exhaustion during editing. Lucas's contribution to his wife Marcia Lucas's divorce at the end of the trilogy was the struggle he made during post-production for the film and its sequels, and was a contributing factor in his separation at the end of the trilogy. The success of the first Star Wars film sparked more interest in Lucas, both positive and negative, as well as many others who wanted Lucas' financial help or just to threaten him.

Lucas spent considerable time as a writer and producer after the first Star Wars film's debut, as well as on the many Star Wars spinoffs produced for film, television, and other media. Lucas acted as executive producer for the next two Star Wars films, commissioneding Irvin Kershner to direct Return of the Jedi and Richard Marquand to direct Return of the Jedi, as well as giving Lawrence Kasdan a screenwriting credit on the former and giving him a story credit. Lucas also gave his writing credit out of a great deal of admiration for Leigh Brackett's book The Empire Strikes Back after she died of cancer. On all four of Indiana Jones films, he served as story writer and executive producer, as well as good friend Steven Spielberg.

Lucas loved to spend time with the department's designers and often discussed what movies he wanted to make, according to Craig Barron, who worked with ILM as part of the matte painting group. Lucas had intended to make a film about Alexander the Great, but the film was never made, according to Barron. Kurosawa's Kagemusha (1984), Reversing A Time (1988), Ewoks: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992–1996), Lucas credited as executive producer and occasionally story writer in this period. However, there were unsuccessful projects, including More American Graffiti (1979), Willard Huyck's Howard the Duck (1986), Lucas' Willow (1988), Coppola's Willow (1988), and Mel Smith's Radioland Murders (1994).

Pixar's animation company was founded in 1979 as the Graphics Group, which was one third of Lucasfilm's Computer Division. Pixar's early computer graphics research resulted in groundbreaking effects in films including Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Young Sherlock Holmes, and the company was acquired by Steve Jobs in 1986, shortly after he left Apple Computer. Jobs earned Lucas US$5 million and invested US$5 million as capital into the firm. Lucas's intent was to prevent the cash loss caused by his seven-year research efforts with new entertainment technology, as well as his company's shift away from making entertainment equipment rather than tools. Lucas's salary as of June 1983 was worth US$60 million, but he had cash-flow problems following his divorce later this year, coincident with the sudden decrease in Star Wars license sales after the theatrical run of Return of the Jedi. Lucas had no desire to return to Star Wars and had officially ended the sequel trilogy at this time.

Lucas and Tomlinson Holman formed THX Ltd in 1983, and the audio company THX Ltd was established in 1983. The company was once owned by Lucasfilm and now has stereo, digital, and theatrical sound for films and music. The sound and visual effects subdivisions of Lucasfilm are Skywalker Sound and Industrial Light & Magic, while Lucasfilm Games, later renamed LucasArts, manufactures games for the game market.

Lucas, who had lost a substantial portion of his wealth in a divorce case in 1987, was reluctant to return to Star Wars. However, the prequels, which were mostly borrowed from his initial concepts of "The Star Wars," continued to tantalize him with technological options that might make it worthwhile to revisit his older material. Lucas realized that when Star Wars returned to life, in the aftermath of Dark Horse's comic book line and Timothy Zahn's trilogy of spin-off books, there was already a large audience. His children were older, and he was considering directing once more as a result of the explosion of CGI technology.

Lucas would have been making the prequels by 1993, according to Variety among other sources. He began to write more, hinting that the series would be a tragic one, by looking at Anakin Skywalker's fall to the dark side of the story. Lucas started to change the prequels' status relative to the originals; at first, they were supposed to be a "filling-in" of history tangent to the originals, but now he realized that they could be a "filling-in" of one long story that began with Anakin's childhood and ended with his death. This was the last step towards converting the film series into a "Saga." Lucas began work on Episode I: The Beginning in 1994, the first prequel was tentatively named Episode I: The Beginning.

Lucas returned to the original trilogy and made several improvements using newly available digital technology, releasing them in theaters as the Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition. The trilogy underwent further updates in 2004 and Blu-ray debuts in 2011 (and immediately after the 4K series, which were then announced in 2019) to make them compatible with the prequel trilogy. Lucas also produced a Director's Cut of THX 1138 in 2004, which included a number of CGI changes in addition to the Star Wars franchise.

Episode I – The Phantom Menace, the first Star Wars prequel, was finished and released in 1999, and it would be Lucas' first film in over two decades. Lucas revealed that after the first prequel's arrival, he would be directing the next two episodes 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 published in 2002 as Attack of the Clones. Episode III – Revenge of the Sith – was the first prequel to Episode III, which was released in 2005. Despite being box office hits, many fans and commentators regarded the prequels as inferior to the original trilogy. Lucas reflected in 2004 that his conversion from independent to corporate filmmaker resembled Darth Vader's story in several ways.

Lucas wrote Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, directed by Steven Spielberg, for which he collaborated with Jeff Nathanson. The reception, as with the Star Wars prequels, was mixed, with several followers and commentators considering it inferior to its predecessors. Lucas appeared on Cartoon Network, as the creator and executive producer on a second Star Wars animated series, as well as a sequel to the Clone Wars, which premiered with a feature film of the same name before airing its first episode. Dave Filoni, Lucas' chosen by Lucas and closely collaborated with him on this animated film, was the supervising director for this animated series. This series spanned the events between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, as well as the last Star Wars stories in which Lucas was involved in a major way.

Lucas served as executive producer on Red Tails, a war film based on the Tuskegee Airmen's exploits during World War II. While production Anthony Hemingway was working on other projects, he also took over the direction of reshoots.

Lucas resigned from making large blockbuster films in January 2012 and replaced them with smaller, independently funded features.

It was announced in June 2012 that producer Kathleen Kennedy, a long-term collaborator with Steven Spielberg and a producer of the Indiana Jones films, had been named co-chair of Lucasfilm Ltd. Kennedy was announced that she would continue as CEO and serve as co-chairman for at least one year, after which she would replace him as the company's sole CEO. Lucasfilm is now Disney's second-largest single shareholder after Steve Jobs' estate.

Lucas appeared as a creative consultant on The Force Awakens, the Star Wars sequel trilogy's first film. Lucas's role as a film consultant included attending early story meetings; according to Lucas, "I mostly say, 'You can't do this.' You should do it.' The cars don't have wheels,' you should know. They fly with antigravity.' There are a million little pieces in the store... I know all about it.' Lucas's son, Jett, told The Guardian that his father was "very worried" about selling the rights to the franchise, despite hand-picked Abrams to direct, and that his father was "there to lead" but that "he wants to let it go and become the new generation." Lucas' rough story treatments were one of the series's that were turned over to the production team when he was considering creating episodes VII–IX himself years ago; Lucas said in January 2015 that Disney had rejected his script concepts.

On December 18, 2015, J. Abrams' Force Awakens was launched. Kathleen Kennedy produced the film and its sequels. Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company, which had acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, co-produced the latest sequel trilogy. Lucas defended his decision to sell Lucasfilm to Disney in a divorce during an interview with talk show host and journalist Charlie Rose on December 24, 2015, highlighting the stylistic similarities between him and the Force Awakens' creators. Lucas referred to the previous six Star Wars films as his "children" and defended his enthusiasm for them, while The Force Awakens was criticized for its "retro feel," despite saying, "I worked really hard to make them completely different, with different planets, with different spaceships, etc." Lucas later apologised for his remark likening Disney to "white slaves" after he received some flak and later apologised.

Lucas made Strange Magic, his first musical, in 2015. At Skywalker Ranch, the film was shot. The film was directed by Gary Rydstrom. A fifth installment of the Indiana Jones story was also announced at the same time as the sequel trilogy, with Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg returning to the franchise. Lucas did not say that the selling of Lucasfilm would have an effect on his film participation. Lucas declared in October 2016 that he would not be interested in the film's plot but that he will continue as an executive producer. The first film in a Star Wars anthology series, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, was released in 2016. It told the tale of the rebels behind the building of the Death Star in the original Star Wars film, and Lucas loved it more than The Force Awakens. In 2017, Lucas described the Last Jedi, the second film in the sequel trilogy, as "beautifully made."

Lucas has had cursory involvement in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), the Star Wars subscription service The Mandalorian, and the eighth season of Game of Thrones. Lucas spoke with J. J. Abrams before the latter began drafting the script to the sequel trilogy's final film, The Rise of Skywalker, which was released in 2019.

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