"Star Wars" filmmaker George Lucas has settled on Los Angeles for the home of his US$1 billion storytelling museum, after pulling the project from Chicago last year.

[LOS ANGELES] "Star Wars" filmmaker George Lucas has settled on Los Angeles for the home of his US$1 billion storytelling museum, after pulling the project from Chicago last year.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Tuesday that the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be located in Exposition Park in downtown Los Angeles. "I believed in the vision for the Lucas Museum, and we went after it with everything we have - because I know that L.A. is the ideal place for making sure that it touches the widest possible audience," Garcetti said in a statement, thanking Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson.

The museum was initially planned for Chicago, but Lucas ran into legal challenges from an open-spaces group and pulled the project. Garcetti immediately moved to woo the filmmaker to house the museum in Los Angeles.

The proposed museum, valued at US$1 billion and funded by Lucas, would feature exhibitions of Lucas' collection of paintings, illustrations and digital art from the blockbuster"Star Wars" movie franchise he started in 1977. "South Los Angeles's Promise Zone best positions the museum to have the greatest impact on the broader community, fulfilling our goal of inspiring, engaging and educating a broad and diverse visitorship," the museum's board of directors said in a statement.

The proposed site for the museum is next to the University of Southern California, where Lucas studied film and met future collaborators including Steven Spielberg.

Lucas sold his "Star Wars" franchise to Walt Disney Co in 2012 for US$4 billion.

Disney rebooted the franchise with six new films, including a new trilogy in the space saga commencing with 2015's "The Force Awakens," and standalone stories such as December's "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story."</s>Star Wars creator George Lucas and his team have chosen Los Angeles over San Francisco as the home of a museum that will showcase his work.

After what organisers called an extremely difficult decision, they have announced that the museum will be built in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, where it will sit alongside other more traditional museums.

The director has been trying to build the museum, called The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, for nearly a decade, and is financing the project by himself.

The project became the subject of a rivalry between the two cities, with San Francisco offering Treasure Island in the middle of the bay as a home.</s>LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Star Wars" creator George Lucas and his team have chosen Los Angeles over San Francisco as the home of a museum that will showcase his work.

After what organizers called an extremely difficult decision, they announced Tuesday that the museum will be built in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, where it will sit alongside other more traditional museums.

Lucas has been trying to build the museum, called The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, for nearly a decade, and is financing the project by himself.

The project became the subject of a rivalry between the two cities, with San Francisco offering Treasure Island in the middle of the bay as a home.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Star Wars" creator George Lucas and his team have chosen Los Angeles over San Francisco as the home of a museum that will showcase his work.

After what organizers called an extremely difficult decision, they announced Tuesday that the museum will be built in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, where it will sit alongside other more traditional museums.

Lucas has been trying to build the museum, called The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, for nearly a decade, and is financing the project by himself.

The project became the subject of a rivalry between the two cities, with San Francisco offering Treasure Island in the middle of the bay as a home.</s>LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Star Wars" creator George Lucas and his team have chosen Los Angeles over San Francisco as the home of a museum that will showcase his work.

After what organizers called an extremely difficult decision, they announced Tuesday that the museum will be built in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, where it will sit alongside other more traditional museums.

Lucas has been trying to build the museum, called The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, for nearly a decade, and is financing the project by himself.

The project became the subject of a rivalry between the two cities, with San Francisco offering Treasure Island in the middle of the bay as a home.</s>LOS ANGELES - "Star Wars" creator George Lucas and his team have chosen Los Angeles over San Francisco as the home of a museum that will showcase his work.

 

 After what organizers called an extremely difficult decision, they announced Tuesday that the museum will be built in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, where it will sit alongside other more traditional museums.

 

 Lucas has been trying to build the museum, called The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, for nearly a decade, and is financing the project by himself.

 

 The project became the subject of a rivalry between the two cities, with San Francisco offering Treasure Island in the middle of the bay as a home.</s>The Force was with Los Angeles.

The board of directors for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art announced Tuesday that the City of Angels will be the site for the $1 billion facility that will house George Lucas’ personal art collection.

The city’s Exposition Park will be the home of the futuristic building, which is sure to be a draw for “Star Wars” fans and architecture geeks alike.

Los Angeles beat out San Francisco for the site.

In a statement, the board said, “Settling on a location proved to be an extremely difficult decision precisely because of the desirability of both sites and cities.”

But it said that “South Los Angeles’s Promise Zone best positions the museum to have the greatest impact on the broader community, fulfilling our goal of inspiring, engaging and educating a broad and diverse visitorship. Exposition Park is a magnet for the region and accessible from all parts of the city.

“As a museum uniquely focused on narrative art, we look forward to becoming part of a dynamic museum community, surrounded by more than 100 elementary and high schools, one of the country’s leading universities as well as three other world-class museums.”

The project has been years in the making for Lucas who has about 10,000 illustrations and paintings from noted artists as well as memorabilia from his “Star Wars” franchise.

In 2014, it was announced that Lucas would build the 275,000-square-foot museum on Chicago’s Lakefront. The filmmaker’s wife, financial executive Mellody Hobson, is a Chicago native.

Friends of the Parks, a nonprofit organization that lobbies for the preservation of parks and open spaces in Chicago, filed a federal lawsuit to block construction.

Two years later Lucas announced he would be relocating the project to California.</s>The 72-year-old filmmaker has finally found a home for his passion project after experiencing several location setbacks.

After abandoning plans to build the museum in his wife Mellody Hobson's native Chicago, Illinois last year (16), he also considered the San Francisco Bay area as a potential site, but Los Angeles has won out, and the Exposition Park neighbourhood near the director's alma mater University of Southern California is now the official home of the Lucas MNA.

Los Angeles City Mayor Eric Garcetti couldn't be happier about the forthcoming arrival of "a new jewel" in the metropolis, noting the museum will “soon bring unrivalled opportunities to be immersed in stories told on canvas and celluloid".

“I believed in the vision for the Lucas Museum, and we went after it with everything we have," Garcetti said in a statement to Variety on Tuesday (10Jan17). "I know that L.A. is the ideal place for making sure that it touches the widest possible audience."

He then thanked George and his wife for choosing Los Angeles, adding, "I am deeply grateful to Mellody and George, and to our educational, governmental, and cultural leaders for their extraordinary support in helping us bring the museum home. Now it’s time to build the vision.”

Lucas is expected to provide the majority of the funds to build his museum, which will house the Star Wars director's massive art and film memorabilia collection.</s>LOS ANGELES (AP) — The force, it seems, was with Los Angeles. And San Francisco was left on the dark side.

“Star Wars” creator George Lucas and his team were on the side of the City of Angels over the City by the Bay on Tuesday, choosing LA as the home of a museum that will showcase his life’s work and huge film history collection.

After what organizers called “extensive due diligence and deliberation,” they announced that the museum will be built in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, where it will sit alongside other more traditional museums including the California Science Center and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Lucas has been trying to build the museum, called The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, for nearly a decade, and is financing the project by himself with plans to spend over $1 billion.

The appealing project became the source of yet another heated rivalry between the two always-competing cities, with San Francisco offering Treasure Island with its scenic views in the middle of the bay as a home that the museum would have had virtually to itself.

“We have been humbled by the overwhelmingly positive support we received from both San Francisco and Los Angeles during our selection process,” the museum organizers said in a statement.

It will house an extensive personal collection that includes 40,000 paintings, illustrations and film-related items including storyboards and costumes from “The Wizard of Oz,” ”Casablanca” and of course “Star Wars.”

LA seemed an obvious choice for Lucas, not just because of its film industry legacy. He is an alumnus of the film school at the University of Southern California, which is right across the street from the museum site.

But Lucas has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for most of his life, and it was home to Lucasfilm until Disney Co. bought it in 2012.

LA Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement after the decision that “millions of Angelenos and visitors will enjoy an extraordinary collection anchored in storytelling — an art that carries so much meaning in the history and legacy of Los Angeles.”

In addition to its two major museums, Exposition Park is home to the LA Memorial Coliseum, where the USC Trojans and Los Angeles Rams play football, and an under-construction stadium for a new Major League Soccer team, LAFC. A light rail line that opened just last year connects the park with downtown Los Angeles and the beaches to the West.

The project also comes amid a museum boom in Los Angeles that includes The Broad, a buzzing new contemporary art museum downtown.

And it makes Southern California the definitive home base of the Star Wars galaxy, with Disney having bought the rights to the franchise and now building a Star Wars-themed land within its Magic Kingdom in Anaheim.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>The museum will exhibit the filmmaker's personal collection of fine and popular art, including collectible memorabilia related to his "Star Wars" franchise.

For a while, George Lucas, the mastermind behind “Star Wars,” has been keeping us guessing as to which city he would choose to build his $1 billion Museum of Narrative Art — would it be Los Angeles or San Francisco?

Well, finally, we now know the answer: L.A. is the winning city.

The museum will exhibit the filmmaker’s personal collection of fine and popular art, including collectible memorabilia related to his very popular science-fiction franchise. The museum will be housed in a futuristic-looking building to be built in L.A.’s Exposition Park. This design beat out a competing design for Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay.

READ MORE: ‘Star Wars Rebels’ Season 3 Trailer: Darth Maul and Obi-Wan Prepare for an Epic Rematch

“It feels like this incredible gift has come home. I always thought Los Angeles was the natural place to spread the vision of George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, to make art and creativity accessible and inspirational to the next generation,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said of the filmmaker and his wife. “It’s a natural place to have this museum in the creative capital of the world and in the geographic center of the city. It’s a banner day for L.A.”

The 72-year-old filmmaker himself will fund this project, which will amount to about $1 billion, including building costs, his art and an endowment of at least $400 million.

According to Mayor Garcetti, building the 275,000-square-foot museum will create tens of thousands of jobs in construction and more than a thousand permanent jobs once the museum is open.

The museum is also expected to attract more tourists to Los Angeles. “People will visit from around the world to see the original Darth Vader mask and Norman Rockwell paintings,” Garcetti said.

READ MORE: How ILM’s John Knoll Brought ‘Star Wars’ Full Circle With ‘Rogue One’

Other people both in the entertainment and arts worlds have shown their support to Lucas’ plan to erect a museum.

After learning about the news on Tuesday, DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg said, “This is a real triumph for the city of L.A., and this will be a transformative opportunity for L.A. “First and foremost for our residents, who are going to have an outstanding cultural, iconic new force here — the force will be with us — and I think for tourism, and for the continued, extraordinary transformation of downtown Los Angeles, and for Exposition Park and the other museums it will be joining.”

Lucas’ art collection consists of about 10,000 paintings and illustrations including works by Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth and R. Crumb, along with Hollywood memorabilia from films such as “Star Wars” and “The Ten Commandments.”

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The board for the US$1 billion Lucas Museum of Narrative Art announces it will construct the museum in Los Angeles, California.