A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Since the late 1970s, so many Star Wars movie tie-ins have been published that they’d fill a Star Destroyer’s cargo hold. From novelizations of the screenplays to comic books, radio dramatizations, and even parodies, the publishing industry has given Star Wars fans different means to explore George Lucas’s original six-film space fantasy saga and Star Wars: The Force Awakens over the past 39 years. With less than five months to go before the premiere of Disney/Lucasfilm’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, let’s explore the brightest shining stars of the Star Wars literary tie-in universe: Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, George Lucas (ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster. Published by Del Rey in December 1976 with cover art by conceptual artist, Foster’s adaptation of Lucas’s fourth draft of the Star Wars screenplay gave the world its first peek of that galaxy far, far away. The novel sold moderately well before the film opened in May 1977. After Star Wars became...

Jaws 2 (1978) Directed by Jeannot Szwarc Written by Carl Gottlieb and Howard Sackler, based on characters created by Peter Benchley Starring: Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Mark Gilpin. Ann Dusenberry Martin Brody: But I'm telling you, and I'm telling everybody at this table that that's a shark! And I know what a shark looks like, because I've seen one up close. And you'd better do something about this one, because I don't intend to go through that hell again! With the phenomenal success of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws - with its $260 million domestic gross ($470 million worldwide), it’s not surprising that Universal Studios commissioned a sequel while the blockbuster was still in its record-setting theatrical run. Producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, who didn’t want their competition to make Jaws 2,  egan developing a follow-up story as early as the fall of 1975. Zanuck and Brown also wanted Spielberg to direct Jaws 2, but he r...