page_title: Star Wars (film)
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Star Wars (film) / Production / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: L. to R.&#160;: Frank Shannon, Buster Crabbe, Carol Hughes &amp; Roland Drew in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe - publicity still
context_page_description: Star Wars is a 1977 American epic space-opera film written and directed by George Lucas, produced by Lucasfilm and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It stars Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, David Prowse, James Earl Jones, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker and Peter Mayhew. It is the first installment of the original Star Wars trilogy, the first of the franchise to be produced, and the fourth episode of the "Skywalker saga".
  Lucas had the idea for a science-fiction film in the vein of Flash Gordon around the time he completed his first film, THX 1138 and began working on a treatment after the release of American Graffiti. Star Wars focuses on the journey of Luke Skywalker, who along with Han Solo and the wizened Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, attempt to free Princess Leia from the clutches of the Galactic Empire and the Sith lord Darth Vader. The heroes, in league with the Rebel Alliance, attempt to destroy the Empire's planet-destroying space station, the Death Star.
  Star Wars was released in a limited number of theaters in the United States on May 25, 1977, and quickly became a blockbuster hit, leading to it being expanded to a much wider release.
context_section_description: Lucas had the idea for a space-fantasy film in 1971, after he completed directing his first full-length feature, THX 1138; however, he has said that he had the idea long before then. Believing that the bleak tone of THX 1138 led to its poor reception, Lucas chose to make Star Wars more optimistic; this is what led to its fun and adventurous tone. Originally, Lucas wanted to adapt the Flash Gordon space adventure comics and serials into his own films, having been fascinated by them since he was young.
  He later said,
  I especially loved the Flash Gordon serials ... Of course I realize now how crude and badly done they were ... loving them that much when they were so awful, I began to wonder what would happen if they were done really well.
  At the Cannes Film Festival following the completion of THX 1138, Lucas was granted a two-film development deal with United Artists; the two films were American Graffiti and an untitled space opera inspired by Flash Gordon. He pushed towards buying the Flash Gordon rights, but could not afford them. Lucas later recounted:
  I wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie, with all the trimmings, but I couldn't obtain the rights to the characters. So I began researching and went right back and found where Alex Raymond (who had done the original Flash Gordon comic strips in newspapers) had got his idea from. I discovered that he'd got his inspiration from the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (author of Tarzan) and especially from his John Carter of Mars series books. I read through that series, then found that what had sparked Burroughs off was a science-fantasy called Gulliver on Mars, written by Edwin Arnold and published in 1905. That was the first story in this genre that I have been able to trace. Jules Verne had got pretty close, I suppose, but he never had a hero battling against space creatures or having adventures on another planet. A whole new genre developed from that idea.
  Director Francis Ford Coppola, who accompanied Lucas in trying to buy the Flash Gordon rights, recounted in 1999: "[George] was very depressed because he had just come back and they wouldn't sell him Flash Gordon. And he says, 'Well, I'll just invent my own.'" Lucas went to United Artists and showed them the script for American Graffiti, but they passed on the film, which was then picked up by Universal Pictures. United Artists also passed on Lucas' space-opera concept, which he shelved for the time being. After spending the next two years completing American Graffiti, Lucas turned his attention to his space opera. He drew inspiration from politics of the era, later saying, “It was really about the Vietnam War, and that was the period where Nixon was trying to run for a [second] term, which got me to thinking historically about how do democracies get turned into dictatorships?”
  Lucas began writing in January 1973, "eight hours a day, five days a week", by taking small notes, inventing odd names and assigning them possible characterizations. Lucas would discard many of these by the time the final script was written, but he included several names and places in the final script or its sequels. He used these initial names and ideas to compile a two-page synopsis titled Journal of the Whills, which told the tale of the training of apprentice CJ Thorpe as a "Jedi-Bendu" space commando by the legendary Mace Windy. Frustrated that his story was too difficult to understand, Lucas then began writing a 13-page treatment called The Star Wars on April 17, 1973, which had thematic parallels with Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress.
  After United Artists declined to budget the film, Lucas and producer Gary Kurtz presented the film treatment to Universal Pictures, the studio that financed American Graffiti; however, it rejected its options for the film because the concept was "a little strange", and it said that Lucas should follow American Graffiti with more consequential themes. Walt Disney Productions also turned down the film.
  Lucas said, "I've always been an outsider to Hollywood types. They think I do weirdo films." According to Ku
caption: Lucas's early plan was to buy the rights to the Flash Gordon film serials and comics of the 1930s and 1940s
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