20 facts you might not know about 'Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope'

After his debut film THX 1138 hit theaters, Lucas knew what he wanted to do next. Namely, he wanted to adapt Flash Gordon because he loved the serials as a kid. However, he could not buy the rights that producer Dino de Laurentiis owned. As such, he decided he might as well invent his only Flash Gordon-style story.

After THX 1138, Lucas signed a deal with United Artists to develop two movies. One was American Graffiti, while the other was his space opera, then called The Star Wars. Then, United Artists passed on both of his movies. Universal picked up American Graffiti, but The Star Wars got shelved.

Lucas worked on the script for Star Wars extensively. In fact, he wrote four different screenplays for the film. While each involved aspects that ended up in the final film, it was a pretty messy project.

The Death Star was in his first draft, but there was also a general named Annikin Starkiller. Also, Han Solo was a large, green-skinned alien with gills. One thing that stayed in place was Chewbacca. He was based on Lucas’ Alaskan Malamute dog, named Indiana. Yes, Indiana also lent his name to Indiana Jones.

By the third draft, Annikin Starkiller had become the father of a young farm boy named Luke Starkiller. Also, The Force was introduced. At this point, Lucas started turning to other sources for inspiration. In addition to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and sci-fi movies, he read non-fiction books about storytelling from the likes of Joseph Campbell, James George Frazer, and Bruno Bettelheim.

Eventually, Lucas realized his script was getting unwieldy, so he turned it into a trilogy. Additionally, he turned to artist Ralph McQuarrie to create paintings for a few scenes. Lucas included these with his screenplay that he turned into 20th Century Fox. Fox liked it and gave him a deal for $5 million, which became $8.25 million.

When production began on Lucas’ film, it was titled The Adventures of Luke Starkiller as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars. Yes, really. From there, during production, he changed Starkiller to Skywalker and changed the title to The Star Wars before landing on Star Wars.

To set up his story, Lucas introduced the crawl. It’s now an iconic part of the Star Wars lore. Initially, Lucas wrote six four-sentence paragraphs. Apparently, it wasn’t quite up to snuff. Lucas showed his friend, the director Brian DePalma, who called it “gibberish” and said Lucas was “out of his mind.” DePalma helped him rewrite the crawl.

Lucas and DePalma did more than write opening crawls together. They did casting sessions together as well. Lucas was casting Star Wars, while DePalma was casting Carrie. The role of Luke Skywalker came down to Mark Hamill and William Katt. Hamill got Star Wars, but Katt was cast in Carrie.

Several actors tried out for the role of Princess Leia. That includes Amy Irving (another Carrie casting) and future Raiders of the Lost Ark costar Karen Allen. Jodie Foster, who was a bit younger at the time, was offered the role, but she was already under contract with Disney. That led to Carrie Fisher getting cast.

Lucas knew Ford from his time working as a carpenter and him in his movie American Graffiti. Because of that, Lucas didn’t want to cast Ford in Star Wars because he wanted to work with a new cast. Ford was brought in to simply read lines during auditions. During this, Lucas realized Ford was the best person for the role.

In a cast full of unknowns, Guinness was effectively a living legend. He had an Oscar for Bridge on the River Kwai and everything. Guinness was hired to play Obi-Wan to lend the film some gravitas. Indeed, people said he was quite professional to work with. On the other hand, Guinness only took the role since he got a portion of the royalties and had an agreement that he didn’t have to do any promotion for the film.

When David Prowse played Darth Vader, he was saying all the lines. He also assumed that his performance would be included in the final film. However, Prowse had a very specific British accent that led to him being nicknamed “Darth Farmer” by the crew. Lucas didn’t think Prowse’s voice would work, so he considered Orson Welles for the voiceover work. Then, Lucas decided Welles’ voice was too famous, so Jones got the part instead.

Mayhew was sitting around waiting for George Lucas so that he could audition. When Lucas entered the room, Mayhew stood up to shake his hand, as he felt that was polite to do. At this point, Lucas says Mayhew’s 7’3’’ unfold in front of him. Immediately, Lucas offered him either Chewbacca or Vader, and Mayhew chose Chewy, wanting to play a hero.

20th Century Fox agreed to finance and produce Lucas’ film. He then found out that Fox had completely disbanded its special effects department. Since his science-fiction film needed special effects, he decided to go ahead and start his own special effect company. This company became Industrial Light and Magic, aka ILM, which became a heavyweight in special effects for decades.

Have you ever heard the stories of Lucas’ friend Francis Ford Coppola trying to shoot Apocalypse Now? It was an experience so fraught it spawned a documentary. Shooting Star Wars wasn’t that bad, but it was close. The film production went over schedule and budget, leading to things being cut left and right. Kenny Baker, who played R2-D2, assumed the film would be a failure. At one point, Lucas was diagnosed with hypertension and exhaustion, and many have said that Lucas seemed depressed while filming.

Fox didn’t think Star Wars could compete with the upcoming summer releases like Smokey and the Bandit. As such, they moved the film’s release date up to May 25. However, the move left fewer than 40 theaters obtaining copies. Fox then tried to strong-arm theaters into showing Star Wars. Otherwise, they wouldn’t send them copies of what was expected to be their big summer hit: The Other Side of Midnight.

Star Wars was the No. 1 movie in the United States for its first three weeks before it dropped that spot. Then, word of mouth led to it exploding. Star Wars returned to the top of the box office in its seventh week and would stay there for the next 15 weeks. Six months after being released, it became the highest-grossing movie in North America and would stay in theaters for weeks.

Audiences loved Star Wars, and so did the Academy. This “B” movie made on a low budget by an unproven filmmaker received 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture. It won six of those, plus a seventh Special Achievement Academy Award given to Ben Burtt for “Alien, Creature, and Robot Voices."

Lucas was given an option by Fox to take a $500,00 payout for finishing the film. Instead, he offered to secure the rights to all merchandising and sequel rights. Needless to say, that paid off big time. Lucas was in Hawaii when he saw Walter Kronkite on the CBS Evening News talking about the popularity of Star Wars. It was at this point Lucas realized he had become a rich man. He wasn’t the only one that noticed. Coppola was still in the middle of his nightmarish experience filming Apocalypse Now. He wrote to his friend George asking if he could get some of that Star Wars money to help fund his film. There is a character in Apocalypse Now named for Lucas. Who plays him? None other than Harrison Ford.