45 Years Ago Today, Hollywood Took A Gamble On A Weird, Scrappy Little Sci-Fi Movie Called Star Wars
Star Wars almost didn't happen. Universal passed on it. United Artists passed on it. Even Disney turned it down, which is ironic given the company's recent $4 billion acquisition of the franchise. Only 20th Century Fox was willing to take a gamble on this weird, scrappy little sci-fi movie—encouraged by creator George Lucas earning a Best Picture nomination at the 1974 Academy Awards for American Graffiti. This quirky 1950s coming-of-age comedy drama couldn't be more different from the outlandish space opera Lucas was pitching, but the studio saw something in this enthusiastic young filmmaker.
Fox gave Lucas $8 million to make his dream movie: a meagre budget for a lavish, galaxy-spanning epic like Star Wars. To put that into perspective, Columbia gave Lucas's old pal Steven Spielberg almost $20 million in 1977 to make his own sci-fi masterpiece, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That film features spaceships and aliens, and some stunning practical special effects, but nowhere near on the scale of what Lucas envisioned. The budget for Star Wars inevitably increased during production, but only to around $10 million according to producer Gary Kurtz. Lucas made it work and created a phenomenon.
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Watching A New Hope today, 45 years after its premiere on May 25, 1977, it's clear this was a passion project for Lucas. He endured a tornado of bullshit to get it made, and this struggle against the odds gives the film an edge that modern Star Wars movies lack. No one believed in him. Not even the cast, who thought no one would see it. Today, Star Wars feels like a product. Something designed by committee to appeal to as wide an
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