Q&As About 'Star Wars': How much of Star Wars did George Lucas actually write?
In Quora, someone asked:
How much of Star Wars did George Lucas actually write?
My reply:
If you’re asking about the original screenplay for Star Wars (aka Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope), the film that begat the franchise, he wrote every one of the four drafts, most of them without a co-writer. However, whenever he showed the script to his peers (Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola), they would critique his efforts (which is what Lucas wanted them to do) and suggest revisions or rewrites.
Lucas, as fans have learned over the years, is a dedicated filmmaker, and a talented one at that. However, he is happier when he is in the editing room and shaping his movies, while the actual tasks of writing scripts and working with actors are simply not in his comfort zone. (That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like people; Lucas has a reputation for being a super nice person and generous to a fault. He’s just not into writing or helping his cast find the meaning of their scenes or dialogue.)
As a result of his not liking to write, as well as the titanic struggles he was having with 20th Century Fox over the financing of Star Wars, Lucas had a hard time coming up with a good screenplay for the first movie. Between 1975 and 1976 he wrote four drafts, each one different from the one that had come before. It was only when he finished the fourth unrevised draft - one in which Obi-Wan was not killed and accompanied Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, and the droids to the Rebel base…and sat around doing nothing of value - that the script resembled the movie we saw and loved in ‘77.
The script, while decent, lacked a great deal of humor and snappy dialogue, so Lucas asked Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, the husband-and-wife team that had collaborated with him on American Graffiti, to give the script a “pass” and tweak it a little to fix the problems with characterization and dialogue. So the Huyck-and-Katz duo added some of Star Wars’ iconic moments, such as the spirited exchanges between Han Solo and Princess Leia, plus Han’s failed attempt to stall the arrival of Imperial troops at the Death Star’s detention center by pretending to be an Imperial officer over the comlink system. (“Everything is under control….situation normal.”)
So, basically, I’d say George Lucas wrote 85% of the Star Wars screenplay, with Gloria Katz, Willard Huyck, and others (including Carrie Fisher) accounting for the rest.
(Also, George Lucas did not write the best-selling novelization, even though Del Rey/Ballantine Books published it with his name on the title page and on book covers. The job of ghostwriting Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker went to a young novelist named Alan Dean Foster, who also wrote the first “Expanded Universe” novel, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye.)
- A story treatment for a low-budget sequel written without Han Solo or Chewbacca in case Lucasfilm couldn’t convince Harrison Ford to return (Ford was the only one of “the Big Three” that included Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher who did not have a three-film contract). It was also set primarily on one planet - Mimban - and had no space battles; this was purposely written in case Star Wars was only a modest hit and a studio (20th Century Fox, more than likely) only gave Lucasfilm a limited amount of money. This became the basis for Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye
- Story treatments and early drafts for Star Wars - Episode II, which eventually morphed into the story for Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Lucas then hired Leigh Brackett to write a screenplay based on those early ideas, but she died of cancer in 1979 before she could make revisions per Lucas’s wishes. Lawrence Kasdan was then hired because Lucas loved his screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark, so he ended up sharing the screenplay credit with Brackett. Lucas also contributed to the Empire screenplay but only asked for the “Story by” credit
- Story treatments for Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Lucas also shared the “Screenplay by” credit with Kasdan
- Story treatments and the screenplay for Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Other, uncredited script contributions came from Carrie Fisher
- Story treatments and the screenplay co-written by Jonathan Hales for Star Wars - Episode II: Attack of the Clones
- Story treatment and the screenplay for Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, with uncredited revisions by writers such as Tom Stoppard (Empire of the Sun)
- Story outlines for six seasons’ worth of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, a television series he created and executive produced
- Story outlines for Star Wars - Episodes VII-IX, which he included as part of the intellectual property of Lucasfilm Ltd. at the time of his semi-retirement and sale of his company to The Walt Disney Company
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