Star Wars

Star Wars is an epic space opera franchise initially developed by George Lucas during the 1970s and significantly expanded since that time. more...

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The first film in the franchise was simply titled Star Wars, but later had the subtitle A New Hope added to distinguish it from its sequels and prequels. Star Wars was released on May 25, 1977 by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, initially spawning two sequels. Twenty-two years after Star Wars was released, Lucas began the release of a second trilogy as a prequel to the original trilogy.

The franchise has spawned other media including novels, television series, video games, and comic books. These supplements to the film trilogies comprise the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and have resulted in significant development of the series' fictional universe. As of 2008, the overall box office revenue generated by the six Star Wars films has totalled approximately US$4.3 billion, making it the third-highest grossing film series.

History

Original trilogy

In 1971, Universal Studios agreed to make American Graffiti and Star Wars in a two-picture contract, although Star Wars was later rejected in its early concept stages. American Graffiti completed in 1973, and afterwards, Lucas set to work on making his space adventure movie. In early 1973, George Lucas wrote a short summary called "The Journal of the Whills", which told the tale of the training of apprentice C.J. Thorpe as a "Jedi-Bendu" space commando by the legendary Mace Windy. Frustrated that his story was too hard to understand, Lucas then wrote a 13-page treatment called The Star Wars, which was a loose remake of Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. By 1974, he had expanded the treatment into a rough draft screenplay, which added elements such as the Sith, the Death Star, and a young boy as the protagonist, named Annikin Starkiller. For the second draft, Lucas made heavy simplifications, and also introduced the young hero on a farm, with his name now Luke rather than Annikin. Annikin, Luke's father became an active character in the story who was a wise Jedi knight. The "Force" was also introduced as a supernatural power. The next draft removed the father character and replaced him with a substitute named Ben Kenobi, and in 1976 a fourth draft had been prepared for principal photography. The film was titled "Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars." During production, Lucas changed Luke's name to Skywalker and altered the title to just "The Star Wars" and finally "Star Wars".

Read more at Wikipedia.org