George Lucas

George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker. The creator of Star Wars, he executive-produced its first six films. Close friends with fellow filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas worked on the Indiana Jones franchise with Spielberg after meeting him through his own directorial debut, THX 1138, and the films The Rain People and Apocalypse Now, directed by Coppola. With the latter's backing, Lucas made American Graffiti, and subsequently relied on its success to create Star Wars. Although it suffered significant setbacks and failed to achieve what Lucas wanted, the film was an immense success. Lucas thus continued to tell his mythology, producing the third saga film in 1983.

However, Lucas was then divorced by his wife, Marcia, and was left with a three-year-old daughter. Lucas thus decided to prioritize raising his family, leaving his company, Lucasfilm, to manage the popular Star Wars franchise. In the 1980s, filming technology developed under Lucasfilm's Industrial Light & Magic division, whose employee John Knoll co-created Photoshop and whose computer division spawned EditDroid and Avid and developed into Pixar. Lucas also became close acquaintances with mythologist Joseph Campbell, often speaking with his "Yoda" at Skywalker Ranch up until Campbell's death. In the 1990s, Lucas resumed active participation in the film industry, working on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and joining fellow film directors such as Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, and Stanley Kubrick alongside Spielberg and Coppola on the Film Foundation's board of directors.

Lucas also founded Edutopia, an education organization, and continued to push the boundaries of filmmaking technology to create the Special Editions. Faced with a decision to either go back to directing films that are more pure cinema and more visually-oriented and possibly never return to Star Wars, or to finish Star Wars by telling the backstory, which was never intended to be done, was not written as a movie, and yet was now a feasible project with new technology. From the late 1990s to 2005, Lucas returned with much of the film crew from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles to complete the Star Wars saga with the prequel trilogy, where he would be able to tell the story of Darth Vader, as intended at first with the original trilogy, without any frustrations with technology.

After working on Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series with Dave Filoni, Lucas desired to return to experimental films, and sold Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Company in 2012 to prevent risking the company's financial standing and the livelihoods of his employees. Following his remarriage and having another daughter in 2013, Lucas spearheaded the development of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which is being constructed in Los Angeles, California.

Text and facts from the “George Lucas” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.