George Lucas

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Lucas (2009)

George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944 in Modesto , California ) is an American producer , screenwriter and director . His most successful film projects were the Star Wars film series and the Indiana Jones - tetralogy . In addition, Lucas, with companies such as the animation studio Industrial Light & Magic of his former Lucasfilm group, is a pioneer in the use of digital cinema cameras and the THX quality standard as a very committed businessman in the film industry .

In 2009, Lucas was ranked on the list of the richest people in the world of Forbes magazine with an estimated net worth of three billion dollars at No. 205. But his Star Wars saga (Episode 1-6, including the re-release of Episode 4 6 in 1997) grossed over $ 4.4 billion worldwide (as of January 2010).

In 2005, the estimated Forbes Magazine by Star Wars - Merchandising 28 years of revenue generated and identified a total of nearly 20 billion US dollars. This makes Star Wars financially the most successful film project to date.

In October 2012, it was announced that Lucas had sold its Lucasfilm group of companies to the Walt Disney Company for over $ 4 billion , with the majority of the proceeds being donated to educational purposes.

Life

Childhood and youth

George Walton Lucas was born to Dorothy and George Lucas Sr. in the small town of Modesto in the San Joaquin Valley . Luca's father owned a stationery store called LM Morris. George Junior had two older and one younger sister. At the time, his father still assumed that his son would later inherit the business and continue to run it. Since Dorothy Lucas stayed in the hospital frequently and for long periods, the responsibility lay with her husband. George Sr. always tried to transfer the conservative work ethic to his children and was strict and consistent in upbringing.

At a young age, George Lucas read novels such as Treasure Island , Robinson Crusoe , The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as well as comics by Donald Duck and Superman and the stories of Robin Hood . Due to his historical interest, Lucas also delved into the biographies of General Custer and Thomas Edison . Lucas' favorite shows on television included reruns of the Saturday morning series such as Adventure Theater , the comic book adaptation of Flash Gordon and the science fiction series Buck Rogers .

The Lucas family moved to a remote ranch home in the late 1950s . The property was a five acre plantation of walnut trees. Lucas attended Thomas Downey High School and was a mediocre student there. With puberty, Lucas developed a strong interest in motorcycles, and later also in cars. He often spent his free time in a car repair shop working on his tuned Autobianchi Bianchina . At the age of 16 it was Lucas' big dream to start a racing career.

Three days before graduating from school, on June 12, 1962, 18-year-old George Lucas was involved in a car accident. When he wanted to turn into the driveway of his parents' house on his way home at night, his classmate Frank Ferreira tried to overtake him at 140 km / h. The two cars collided, with Lucas' Fiat overturning several times and crashing into a walnut tree. Shortly before the impact, Lucas' seat belt tore and he was thrown out of the car. Ferreira was unharmed while Lucas was lying unconscious on the side of the road.

Lucas contracted several bruises to his lungs and broke several ribs. He was in a coma for two days and in intensive care for another two weeks . He himself called his accident a “matriculation test” after which he decided against a career as a racing driver.

“Before the first accident, you don't worry about the risk because you don't realize how close you are to the abyss. I belonged to a club that had some racing drivers and one of them went on and he even drove at Le Mans . [...] You can pretty much imagine a future in racing and know that it will ultimately cost your life. Somehow I realized that this might not be right for me after all. "

- George Lucas 1981

education

George Lucas chose Modesto Junior College , where he studied anthropology , psychology and philosophy . Although he was still interested in motorsport, from then on he only photographed the racing cars. His father encouraged his interest in 35mm cameras and set up a darkroom for his son . When the father also expressed the desire to hand over his shop, George Lucas declined and, after a good junior college degree, enrolled at the University of Southern California film school in Los Angeles.

Thanks to the financial support of his father and a phone call from his friend Haskell Wexler , who was friends with several college professors, Lucas was able to study English, astronomy and history. He also attended two film seminars in which he learned film history and animation . Luca's contemporaries at the time were Hal Barwood , Willard Huyck , John Milius , Basil Poledouris, and Matthew Robbins , who all became scriptwriters and directors, while Caleb Deschanel even received five Academy Award nominations.

In 1965, George Lucas wanted to become a documentary filmmaker. He used his interest in photo montages and animations in his first student film Look at Life , a montage of quick sequences of images that is also accompanied by calm guitar sounds. His next student film was entitled Freedom in Germany . This short film is about a young man with a desire for freedom in divided Berlin.

Herbie , Lucas' third student film, consisted of footage of night traffic reflected in the body of a car. With this type of filming, Lucas wanted to combine his documentary skills with a visual aspect. The credits read: “These moments of reflection were presented to you by Paul Golding and George Lucas.” Lucas’s last short film before graduating was also his first 16mm film in color, 1: 42.08 . This film alluded to Lucas's predilection for car racing, with racing driver Pete Brock playing the lead role of the strenuous racing driver during his test preparations on a circuit in California .

Thanks to his imaginative student films, Lucas was highly regarded by students and professors. He admits that he was inspired by many films made before 1964, including Dr. Strange, or How I Learned to Love the Bomb by Stanley Kubrick and Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! by Richard Lester . He was particularly interested in the films by Akira Kurosawa , John Ford and William Wyler .

When Lucas graduated from the University of Southern California in August 1966 , he was about to begin his military service, expecting to be drafted to Vietnam . However, upon medical examination, it was found that he had diabetes and was unfit. Lucas then took a job as a cameraman with Saul Bass . Lucas assisted him on the film Why Man Creates (1968), which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 1969 .

In January 1967, Lucas returned to the University of Southern California as assistant to seminar leader Gene Peterson . During this time Lucas was filming an early version of THX 1138 called Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB . This short film is a complex but abstract sequel to freedom , but with a happy ending . With his former partner of Herbie , Paul Golding, Lucas produced his next short film, Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town . This fantasy film alluded to the poem of the same name by EE Cummings and reflects the same impressionistic and surreal narrative by the poet.

Less than a month later, Lucas made another documentary that explains the relationship of a disc jockey to his audience in an informative and idiosyncratic way . The short film The Emperor is about a radio operator and jokingly explains the discrepancy between his audience and reality. Lucas shot this film without a concept, which led to the fact that he intentionally shot a lot of footage during the filming in order to turn it into a film in the editing room.

In the spring of 1967, the University of Southern California , commissioned by Columbia Pictures , proposed two friends of Lucas to direct the Mackenna's Gold study project . When one of them canceled the project, Lucas was again proposed as his successor. During filming, he was appalled by the very decadent working methods and lost interest in films with high budgets . He didn't want to get into the feature film business and manage film productions, but rather to become a cameraman for documentaries. Filming was completed on June 18, 1967. Lucas took this date as the occasion for his next short film, entitled 6.18.67 . The film was compiled from residual material from Mackenna's Gold .

Establishment as a filmmaker

Lucas received a Warner Memorial Fellowship that allowed him to spend six months in any department of the Warner Bros. -Studios offered. Shortly before Luca's arrival, director Francis Ford Coppola began filming The Golden Rainbow . Coppola graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1963 and then took a position on the script team at Warner Bros. Seven Arts, and in 1963 he directed Dementia . He offered Lucas, who found little employment in the Warner Bros. studios, an assistant position. Lucas was commissioned to photograph possible camera angles of Coppola's The Golden Rainbow . By the time filming was finished, Lucas and Coppola had become good friends. Coppola's next project, Love Never A Stranger, should be produced independently of Hollywood and be more like a student film. He planned an odyssey from New York to Nebraska. He convinced Lucas to become his assistant with a deal with Warner Bros. Studios that Lucas would be paid to write a screenplay for THX 1138 . Lucas Coppola was never able to accompany a stranger while filming Love and work on a THX-1138 script.

Coppola, who had wanted to turn away from Hollywood's film industry for a long time , suggested that Lucas set up an independent studio. After a meeting with the filmmaker John Korty, who reported on his third production in his own studio, Lucas and Coppola decided to visit the Korty Films studio. Coppola also looked at other independent studios. So he visited a small company called Lanterna Films in Denmark and was given a zoetrope as a souvenir of his visit. Soon afterwards, together with Lucas, he ordered high-quality film equipment and took care of premises that he had found in San Francisco in 1969. He named his studio American Zoetrope .

THX 1138

Lucas was named deputy managing director of Zoetrope Studios and would be allowed to shoot his first feature film, THX 1138, there, provided Warner Bros. approved Lucas's script. Overall, the script was rejected twice by Warner Bros. After a change of management within Warner in June 1969, Lucas proposed the THX 1138 a third time and convinced the studio. Warner also loaned $ 300,000 to build Zoetrope Studios.

While the THX 1138 was still being produced, Lucas was working on a new project that was to resemble his earlier short film The Emperor . He was thinking of a film that is set in Modesto, Luca's birthplace, and that has something in common with his youth. He named this film American Graffiti .

Negotiations with Warner about accepting the THX 1138 film were slow. The studio wanted to cut some scenes from the film and asked for the $ 300,000 loan to be paid back. Warner also announced that it would end its participation in Zoetrope Studios. During this crisis, Lucas looked for another way to fund the preproduction of American Graffiti and hired film producer Gary Kurtz to help plan the budget. Lucas also founded his own film company, Lucasfilm, with the help of his legal advisor Tom Pullock .

On March 11, 1971, Warner Bros. released THX 1138 in theaters. The theme of the film was related to a widespread fear of the loss of identity of the individual through an engineered and centralized society. THX 1138 also deals with the question of a person's free will. The theatrical release went without a big stir, but the film received positive reviews from critics. Overall, Warner Bros. marketed the film in a different way that George Lucas had not envisioned in this way. In an interview, Lucas expressed his criticism of Warner Bros. and their marketing strategies :

“Making films is an art; Selling films is a business. The only problem is that they have no idea how to sell films. So they try to make films that people can get into without having to be sold to them. That is where I see the real problem. They lose interest as soon as they are not dealing with a film that just needs to be shown in the cinemas and people come in droves. "

- George Lucas

American graffiti

After the modest success of THX 1138 , Lucas received an offer to work as a director on the film Diamond Lady. Since Lucas was planning his own project with American Graffiti at the time , he turned it down. In Cannes , Lucas met David Picker, President of United Artists . Pickers promised Lucas US $ 10,000 to develop the script. The studio later turned down the project due to high license fees for the planned rock 'n' roll music. Lucas finally got an acceptance at Universal , provided that the budget did not exceed a million US dollars and George Lucas hired a well-known actor to make the film more interesting in theatrical ads. Lucas couldn't hire a star on a small budget and asked Coppola, who had a huge hit with The Godfather , if he could become Universal's reassurance producer of American graffiti ; Coppola agreed.

The US theatrical release of American Graffiti on August 1, 1973. Lucas and Universal's expectations were far exceeded with a box office of more than 118 million US dollars. The comedy drama about growing up received mostly positive reviews. In the process, Lucas rights to the net income made him a millionaire and left the value of his company Lucasfilm Ltd. increase enormously. With this money, Lucas continued to build his small business and planned his next project, a science fiction film called The Star Wars .

Starwars

During 1973 and 1974, Lucas wrote a first draft of a science fiction film that was to include motifs from ancient myths and modern fairy tales. He was thinking of a children's film that would take place in space and should be a mixture of Flash Gordon and Alarm in space . He finally submitted the finished script draft to Universal and United Artists; Both studios waived, however, as the manuscript was written in a rather complex manner and was therefore difficult to understand. In addition, the extremely ambitious project was considered almost impossible to implement in terms of trick technology. Lucas had more success at 20th Century Fox (or Coryworle ). The studio signed him and granted him an estimated budget of $ 3 million, even though the production company was in financial trouble at the time. Lucas 'main pioneer was Alan Ladd, Jr., who was a new member of the film company's board of directors and who believed in Lucas' storytelling skills. In addition, Lucas negotiated with 20th Century Fox over the sequel, television and merchandising rights, as well as the rights to the film music and the exploitation of the soundtrack, and on the other hand waived higher remuneration as a director. Since they did not believe in a greater success of the film and the rights mentioned above did not seem to be worth much at the time, they got involved in the deal and continued on August 20, 1973, 19 days after the cinema release of American Graffiti , a corresponding contract.

George Lucas then worked on a script and decided to break the actual plot of the film into three sections so that 20th Century Fox's low budget would be enough. So he turned the first section of the script into the first film called Star Wars .

To produce his film, Lucas put together a team that consisted less of people from the Hollywood film industry in order not to exhaust his low budget. Lucas' friend, Ben Burtt from the University of Southern California, joined Lucasfilm. Burtt specialized in the field of sound effects and then formed the sound department of Lucasfilm as the only employee.

In many sequences in Star Wars , Lucas expected realistic special effects that should stand out from other productions. He thought of the flight movements in series like Flash Gordon , which in turn seemed too slow for him in relation to Star Wars . In 1975 he hired John Dykstra to manage the photographic special effects. Dykstra has already worked on projects such as Andromeda - Deadly Dust from Space and Silent in Space . Lucas set up a special effects studio in a 2,500 m² warehouse in Van Nuys and handed over the management of this company called Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to Dykstra . Lucas also set up a recording studio in the same warehouse and transferred the sound department to ILM's company building with Ben Burtt in charge. A little later, the recording studio was named Sprocket Systems .

The following filming of Star Wars proved to be an extraordinary burden for Lucas, both physically and mentally. Since the agreed budget had long been exceeded and the schedule could not be adhered to, Lucas seriously doubted his project. ILM had great difficulty producing the intricate special effects, and its camera crew and actors would often joke or get angry about Lucas. For example, actor Harrison Ford , who plays Han Solo in the trilogy, criticized Lucas's dialogues:

"That's horrible! George, you can type such crap into a machine, but there is no way you can speak it. "

- Harrison Ford

Lucas was in constant tension, lost his voice for a while and even suffered a faint attack during the production .

Star Wars premiered on May 25, 1977 in just 32 American cinemas. These 32 theaters took in $ 254,809 on Matchday 1. The simple fairy tale of good and bad, told in a science fiction world, met the taste of the cinema-goers. In retrospect, some critics even saw something like the visual overcoming of the American Vietnam trauma in the film . The cinema operators realized that they had underestimated the demand and urged Fox to immediately make more copies. By mid-June, the film had shown in over 350 theaters and in November, Star Wars revenues even exceeded that of Jaws . Producing a successful science fiction film at the time meant grossing around $ 30 to 35 million. Star Wars grossed $ 276 million worldwide in a year and a half. This made Star Wars by far the most successful film in film history at the time. The initially cautious merchandising production also quickly found suitable licensees . George Lucas owed a large part of the Star Wars revenues to the acquired rights to merchandising .

Due to the success of the first part of the story, Lucas was able to devote himself to the two sequels and shot the equally successful successors The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and The Return of the Jedi (1983) , sometimes under difficult conditions . In both films he acted as a producer and left the direction Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand respectively .

In the 1990s, George Lucas had his Star Wars trilogy revised by providing individual scenes with new special effects and adapting a few actions. In 1997 the three films came back to the cinemas as a "Special Edition". Shortly afterwards, the production work began on another Star Wars trilogy, which was supposed to tell the story behind the old films. The fourth Star Wars film, which was completed at the end of the 90s, is thus the first part of the story told. It was released in 1999 under the title Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace and is its most successful Star Wars film with grossing $ 924.3 million .

The sequels Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) were released every three years . The new Star Wars trilogy differs from the original trilogy in particular through the increased use of computer animation and other special effects. This earned the new films the criticism of focusing on the effects and neglecting the actual story. George Lucas himself directed all three new Star Wars films.

The American animated series Clone Wars was filmed in three seasons from 2003 to 2005 and describes the plot between episodes II and III in short episodes lasting five to 15 minutes.

In 2004 a Star Wars DVD edition was released, which includes all parts of the original trilogy in an edited form. With this release, Lucas also officially changed the titles of the individual films in the original trilogy.

From 2008 to 2014, the computer animation series The Clone Wars, produced by Lucas, ran on television.

Indiana Jones

Even before the filming of Star Wars, Lucas discussed an idea with screenwriter Philip Kaufman , who was an archaeologist in the character of the fearless Indiana Smith. The first name "Indiana" came from Lucas' dog of the same name. Kaufman worked with Lucas on script ideas for several weeks. The project ended after Kaufman was asked by Clint Eastwood to write the script for his new western The Texans .

After Star Wars hit theaters , George Lucas, who was vacationing in Maui at the time, met Steven Spielberg . Spielberg had previously directed the film Uncanny Encounters of the Third Kind and was looking for a new project. Lucas offered him Hunter of the Lost Ark . The plot of Indiana Smith's adventure convinced Spielberg, who agreed to the project. At the beginning of 1978, Lucas was able to hire the screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan , who finished the screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark . Together with Steven Spielberg, Kasdan and Lucas worked on the final script for a total of three years, in which the main character was finally called Indiana Jones. Steven Spielberg directed the film and George Lucas produced Raiders of the Lost Ark .

Compared to the Star Wars films, the need for special effects was low and the shooting was straightforward. After post-production at ILM was completed, Raiders of the Lost Ark was released in theaters on June 12, 1981 and became the top-grossing film of the year, which later won four Academy Awards.

With Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), two more feature films followed, building on the story and the success of the first part. From 1992, Lucas acted as the writer and producer of a television series titled The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones . The series was awarded a Golden Globe nomination in the Drama category and twelve Emmys , among other things . On May 22, 2008, the fourth part of the Indiana Jones saga started. George Lucas wrote the story, worked on the script and, alongside Spielberg as a director, is the producer of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull . Regarding the planned fifth feature film in the series, it has been announced that Lucas will participate as executive producer, but the ideas for the script will be provided by another source.

Further film productions

George Lucas

Lucas asked Howard G. Kazanjian , his old friend at the University of Southern California, to produce the sequel to American Graffiti . For the script and direction he turned to Bill Norton, who was best known for his drama Cisco Pike (1972). The film, titled The Party is Over… The sequel to American Graffiti opened in American theaters on August 3, 1979. The film deals with the further fates of the main characters of American Graffiti . The complicated nesting of time levels made understanding difficult, so that many viewers could not follow the complex plot and left the cinema screening before the end of the film. The gross profit of the predecessor could not be maintained; the film even turned into a flop.

Lawrence Kasdan had sold a screenplay in 1980 called Hot Blood - Cold Blood to Alan Ladd Jr. , who now had his own business producing films for Warner Bros. Ladd was willing to fund Kasdan's directorial debut on the condition that he seek advice from an experienced director. Lucas took on the role of producer of Hot Blood - Cold Blood . While he did not interfere in Kasdan's ideas during the shooting, Lucas was at his side with advice during the editing. At the theatrical release of Hot Blood - Cold Blood , Lucas decided not to be mentioned by name. Kasdan's independent accomplishments shouldn't be distracted by Lucas's name, Lucas said in a later interview.

The animated film Twice Upon a Time was the next outside project that Lucas took part in. John Korty and Charles Swenson were responsible for directing and producing. In 1981, Korty showed Lucas a demonstration video that consisted of static cartoons , which in turn were backlit to give the film more luminosity. Korty also called the process Lumage animation. Lucas was impressed by the idea and was hired as a producer. He also took care of both financing and rental through the Ladd Company . Overall, the film was a moderate success as it was difficult to recoup its production costs.

Walt Disney Pictures let Walter Murch , an old friend and colleague of Lucas, direct Oz - A Fantastic World . When Murch ran into difficulties with budget and production, he turned to Lucas, who from then on was involved in further production as a management consultant .

In 1985 ILM was busy creating a muppet-like figure; Howard the duck from the comic book Howard the Duck . Lucas had been a fan of the character since childhood and had also shown Willard Huyck an issue of Howard the Duck . Over the next few years Huyck wrote numerous script drafts for a comedy with real people who were supposed to interact with the cartoon character. The project met with hesitant acceptance among the film studios, since at this point the popularity of the comic figure waned drastically, not least the comic series was discontinued in 1981. Nonetheless, Universal promised to pay for the budget, provided that Lucas was mentioned as a producer. In the end, the production costs exceeded the agreed budget many times over. When it opened in theaters in August 1986, Howard - An Animal Hero was heavily criticized, and the production costs could not be recovered for a long time.

As a producer, he has also contributed to such films as Kagemusha - The Warrior's Shadow (1980), Journey into the Labyrinth (1986) and Willow (1988).

With his long-time friend Francis Ford Coppola, he made the 3D film Captain Eo in 1986 , in the lead role of which Michael Jackson appeared. This film opened the Star Tours attraction of the same name in 1987 , which, like Captain Eo , was shown at Disneyland Amusement Park in Florida and Disneyland Paris .

Further life

In 1969, George Lucas married Marcia Griffin, from whom he divorced in 1983. Lucas has also adopted three children, Amanda (* 1981), Katie (* 1988) and Jett (* 1993).

The purchase of the 700 hectare Bulltail Ranch near San Rafael in 1980 gave his company Lucasfilm and its subsidiaries such as LucasArts , Lucas Digital, Lucas Licensing, Lucas Learning and Lucas OnLine a corresponding headquarters. Additional acquisitions of neighboring land gradually created a complex with an area of ​​2,600 hectares. Lucas renamed his property the " Skywalker Ranch ".

Together with employees of the Sprocket Systems recording studio, the sound engineer Tomlinson Holman developed a special arrangement of loudspeakers, which together achieve specific acoustics. This so-called THX sound system came onto the market in 1982 and, thanks to the extensive customization options, was installed in many cinemas. THX is now a global standard for high-quality sound reproduction in cinemas and home theater systems . In 1987 Lucas renamed his recording studio, originally called Sprocket Systems, Skywalker Sounds and moved the headquarters together with ILM to his ranch north of San Francisco.

Outrage over learning methods that had already demotivated him as a schoolboy prompted Lucas to set up the George Lucas Educational Foundation as a non-profit foundation for education in 1991 . It has set itself the task of finding out how the provision of education in the computer age could be improved. With EditDroid, the first non-linear computer-based editing system was developed , for example to present multimedia lessons that can be accessed with computers in educational institutions.

George Lucas, who is not a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from Steven Spielberg at the 64th Academy Awards on March 30, 1992 . In his acceptance speech he specifically mentioned Francis Ford Coppola .

“Films are not made by individuals, only in groups. Without the work of the actors, writers, directors, producers and other employees, the many assistants of all kinds and the projectionists, I would not be here today to accept this award. I am very grateful to all of you. […] Thank you, Francis, for everything you taught me. "

- George Lucas

In 2002 Lucas expanded his group of companies to include the Big Rock Ranch near his Skywalker Ranch. Lucasfilm Ltd. also opened 2004 a new subsidiary in Singapore . Lucasfilm Animation Singapore is a digital studio that creates animation for film, television and games. Since 2005, the headquarters of LucasFilm, Industrial Light & Magic and LucasArts have been in the Letterman Digital Arts Center on the site of the former Presidio San Francisco military base - with a view of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge .

The American Film Institute (AFI) honored George Lucas as the 33rd recipient of the Life Achievement Award for his life's work in June 2005 . Following the award ceremony, he replied in an interview to the question about sequels to the Star Wars saga:

“It would be amusing to do sequels with all the characters when they're in their eighties. No, I have no plans to do another Star Wars film at eighty . This is the end!"

- George Lucas

Since 2006, Lucas has been in a relationship with Mellody Hobson, 25 years his junior, who works as a TV presenter and manager at the animation film studio DreamWorks SKG . They were married on June 22, 2013 at his Skywalker Ranch in Marin County .

To person

George Lucas at the 2006 Time 100 gala

George Lucas keeps a low profile from the public about his private life. Due to numerous disappointments with Hollywood's film industry and in particular its film studios, Lucas resigned from the Directors Guild and Writers Guild as well as the Motion Picture Association of America . He now runs a film production company himself. He lives secluded from Los Angeles in San Francisco and finances most of his films completely independently.

Lucas eschews public appearances and does not like giving speeches or announcements. In public he is always very introverted, calm and reserved, and he also prefers to wear checked shirts and white trainers. He regularly donates money to charity. In June 2010, he joined billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's philanthropic campaign The Giving Pledge and pledged to donate more than half of his fortune to charity. He describes himself as "not particularly smart and not a lucky child". Friends like Francis Ford Coppola see him as a “serious person without clumsy humor”. George Lucas describes himself as a devout person with Buddhist - Methodist convictions.

Museum plans

In early 2014, Lucas' plans for a museum called the Lucas Cultural Arts Museum on the Presidio site in San Francisco were rejected by the site administration.

Filmography (selection)

Student and documentary films

Feature films

Director

script

actor

executive producer

Television films and series

script

executive producer

post processing

Awards (selection)

Films in the top 250 of the IMDb
space Movie
14th The Empire Strikes Back
25th war of stars
55 Hunter of the lost treasure
84 Return of the Jedi
119 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

George Lucas received many different awards and nominations for his various film participations. The most popular and most common genre prices are listed below.

Academy Awards

Golden Globe Award

Daytime Emmy Award

  • 2013 : Award in the Outstanding Special Class Animated Program category for Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Saturn Award

Golden Raspberry

  • 2003 : Award in the worst script category for Star Wars Episode II - Attack of the Clones with Jonathon Hales
  • 2009 : Award in the worst remake category for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull along with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall

Honors

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Forbes Magazine: The World's Billionaires 2009
  2. ↑ numbers.com: Box Office History for Star Wars Movies
  3. ↑ ABC News : Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm for $ 4 Billion, October 30, 2012, accessed October 31, 2012
  4. ↑ The Huffington Post : George Lucas Will Donate $ 4 Billion to Education, November 5, 2012, accessed February 2, 2014.
  5. ^ Quote from George Lucas: Press interview (1981); read in The cinema of George Lucas (2005)
  6. ↑ Quote from George Lucas: Documentary George Lucas Maker of Films (1971)
  7. ↑ Originally quoted by Harrison Ford: DVD Commentary Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (2004)
  8. ^ Angie Han: 'Indiana Jones 5' Won't Be the Last One; George Lucas Still Executive Producing. Slashfilm, June 22, 2016, accessed June 7, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Max Evry: Exclusive: Indiana Jones 5 Will Return to Global Scope, Says Frank Marshall. ComingSoon.net, October 1, 2018, accessed June 7, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Quote from George Lucas at the 64th Academy Awards (March 1992)
  11. ↑ Quote from George Lucas: 33rd Life Achievement Award Ceremony (June, 2005)
  12. ↑ Andrea Billups: George Lucas Marries Mellody Hobson. In: People.com. June 24, 2013, accessed June 25, 2013 .
  13. ↑ George Lucas: George Lucas Pledge. (PDF) July 16, 2010, archived from the original on April 15, 2015 ; accessed on June 17, 2016 (English).
  14. ^ The Religious Affiliation of Director George Lucas
  15. ↑ Someone like Dagobert Duck doesn't need classicism in FAZ from February 7, 2014, page 40
  16. ↑ The Top 250 of the IMDb (accessed: 2020)
  17. ↑ AFI.com error . In: afi.com .
  18. ↑ George Lucas. In: Science Fiction Awards Database. Retrieved November 21, 2017 .
  19. ↑ George Lucas receives National Medal of Arts . In: BBC News , BBC, July 11, 2013. Retrieved July 13, 2013. 
  20. ↑ SMPTE® Announces 2014 Honorees and Award Winners. In: smpte.org. Retrieved November 16, 2019 .
  21. ^ Motion-Imaging Industry Luminaries Recognized at SMPTE® Honors & Awards Ceremony. Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers , November 10, 2014, accessed February 1, 2015 .
  22. ↑ Ross Lincoln: George Lucas, Danny Elfman, Others To Be Honored At D23 2015. Deadline, July 14, 2015, accessed August 4, 2015 .

Web links

Commons : George Lucas  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 12, 2006 .
personal data
SURNAME Lucas, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lucas, George Walton Junior (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American producer, screenwriter, and director
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Modesto , California