A seismic missed opportunity: how a failure to pay $500,000 changed the course of cinema history
By Hollywood standards, $500,000 is chump change. And yet, one studio’s refusal to part with half a million dollars ended up drastically altering the landscape of cinema forever, with those reverberations still being felt around the industry almost half a century later.
As has regularly been the case when transformative moments in mainstream filmmaking are involved, it’s that man George Lucas who was at the centre of it. Despite American Graffiti becoming the most profitable film ever made and earning ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ nominations at the Academy Awards, the major studios weren’t sold on his follow-up.
A lifelong fan of sci-fi serials, classic westerns, and Akira Kurosawa, Lucas wanted to combine all of his favourite things into a cosmic epic called Star Wars. 20th Century Fox agreed to back the production, although Lucas was encouraged to seek a significant upgrade on the $150,000 he was paid to helm his breakthrough feature.
His representatives pushed him to ask for $500,000, which he did. However, Lucas was so confident in his vision that he suggested to his paymasters that instead of taking a salary to craft the first instalment of what he hoped would be a multi-film saga, Fox could keep his directing fee so long as he maintained control of the merchandising and sequel rights.
Tie-in merchandise was hardly a booming business at the time, so Fox opted to hold onto its $500,000 and grant Lucas his request. Obviously, hindsight is 20/20 for a reason, but the shockwaves caused by that single decision – one the studio didn’t see as that big of a deal at the time – ended up turning the established conventions of cinema upside down.
Thanks to the money he’d earned from Star Wars, Lucas didn’t just fund sequel The Empire Strikes Back by himself to retain complete creative control, but he funnelled millions into developing and expanding Industrial Light & Magic. Not only is it one of the flagship effects companies in the business responsible for countless pioneering developments, but his Lucasfilm empire would also give rise to the Indiana Jones franchise and Pixar, the latter of which began life as part of the company’s computer division.
To this day, Star Wars remains one of the most lucrative brands on the planet, which has generated close to $30 billion in revenue since 1977. Lucas ended up selling his production company to Disney in 2012 for an estimated $4 billion, which also made him the Mouse House’s single largest individual shareholder.
Lucas has been directly responsible for several cinematic revolutions that includes shattering box office records, creating cultural sensations, pushing the limits of computer technology, inadvertently birthing a byword for computer-animated excellence, and holding more share options in a corporation valued at over $175 billion than anybody else. And to think, if the top brass at Fox had said, “No thanks, we’ll hold onto the merch and sequel rights; here’s your $500,000,” none of it may have happened.
