Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO.

The company is best known for producing the Star Wars films, and has also produced other box office hits, including the Indiana Jones franchise and American Graffiti. It has also been a leader in developing new film technology in special effects, sound, and computer animation, and because of their expertise its subsidiaries often help produce non-Lucasfilm pictures. Lucasfilm is set to move away from films and more into TV, due to rising budgets.^[4]

On July 8, 2005, Lucasfilm's marketing, online, and licensing units moved into the new Letterman Digital Arts Center located in the Presidio in San Francisco. It shares the complex with Industrial Light & Magic and LucasArts. They are also best known for The Deep Note and THX.

Lucasfilm has collaborated with the Walt Disney Company and Walt Disney Imagineering numerous times to create rides and attractions centered on Star Wars and Indiana Jones for various Walt Disney Parks and Resort attractions worldwide.

Lucasfilm had planned an expansion at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, CA, but shelved the plan due to opposition from neighbors. Lucasfilms plans to expand elsewhere.^[5]

Related companies[link]

Subsidiaries[link]

• Industrial Light & Magic - visual effects
• Skywalker Sound - post-production sound design
• LucasArts - video and computer games
• Lucas Licensing - licensing and merchandising
  • Lucas Learning - educational materials
• Lucas Books - book publishing
• Lucasfilm Animation - animation
  • Lucasfilm Animation Singapore - animation
• Lucas Marketing - marketing
• Lucas Online - websites

Former subsidiaries[link]

• THX Ltd. - theater sound system (spun off in 2001)
• Pixar Animation Studios - computer animation film production company (sold to Steve Jobs in 1986, and is now a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company).
• Kerner Optical - Practical effects division (model shop) and 3D development team (spun off from ILM in 2006)

Filmography[link]

Cancelled films[link]

• The Secret of Monkey Island: The Movie (2000)^[6]

In development[link]

• Indiana Jones and the Hell of Sungkyunkwan (2014)
• Untitled CGI Animated Musical Project
• Raiders of the Lost Opale (Late 2018)
• SMTOWN SUPERSTAR (2017)

Television series[link]

• Star Wars: Droids (1985-1986)
• Star Wars: Ewoks (1985-1987)
• The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-1996)
• Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003-2005)
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008-Present)
• Star Wars: Underworld (TBA)

Television films and specials[link]

• The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) (uncredited)
• Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure (1984)
• Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985)
• The Great Heep (1986)

Other productions[link]

• The Making of Star Wars (1977) (produced in association with 20th Century Fox Television)
• SP FX: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) (produced in association with 20th Century Fox Television)
• From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga (1983) (produced in association with 20th Century Fox Television)
• Return of the Ewok (1982)
• Captain EO (1986)
• Star Tours (1987)
• R2-D2: Beneath the Dome (2001)
• Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy (2004) (produced by Prometheus Entertainment in association with Fox Television Studios)
• Lego Star Wars shorts:
  • Lego Star Wars: Revenge of the Brick (2005)
  • Lego Star Wars: The Quest for R2-D2 (2009)
  • Lego Star Wars: Bombad Bounty (2010)
  • Lego Star Wars: The Padawan Menace (2011)
• Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed (2007) (produced by Prometheus Entertainment in association with The History Channel)
• Lego Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Brick (2008)
• Star Tours: The Adventures Continue (2011)

See also[link]

• EditDroid

References[link]

External links[link]

• Lucasfilm website
• LucasArts website

• Lucasfilm Ltd. at the Internet Movie Database

v t e Star Wars Main films Original trilogy Episode IV: A New Hope · Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back · Episode VI: Return of the Jedi Prequel trilogy Episode I: The Phantom Menace · Episode II: Attack of the Clones · Episode III: Revenge of the Sith See also Sequel trilogy · Changes in theatrical and video releases Spin-off films Caravan of Courage · The Battle for Endor · The Clone Wars Television series Droids · Ewoks · Clone Wars · The Clone Wars · Underworld Television specials Holiday Special · The Great Heep Documentaries The Making of Star Wars · SP FX: The Empire Strikes Back · Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi · From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga · Empire of Dreams · Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed Other media Books · Comics (List) · Manga · Radio · Computer and video games (List) · Games · Music · Expanded Universe · Knights of the Old Republic · Shadows of the Empire · The Force Unleashed · Lego Star Wars Films · Star Tours · Star Tours: The Adventures Continue · Star Wars: In Concert · Star Wars Insider · Star Wars Celebration · Star Wars Weekends Related topics Architecture · Canon · Cast · Characters · Conflicts · Creatures · Cultural impact · Holiday · Jedi census · Languages · Locations · Opening Crawl · Philosophy and religion · Physics · Vehicles · Weapons (Death Star) · Comparison to Star Trek Book · Category · Portal · WikiProject

v t e Cinema of the United States Films A–Z of films Films by year Film series Silent films Personnel Actors Animators Cinematographers Critics Directors Editors Producers Score composers Screenwriters Stunt performers Awards and events Academy Awards Directors Guild of America Award Writers Guild of America Award Golden Globes Screen Actors Guild Awards Festivals Theaters Cinema and Theatre Chains Movie theatres Industry by state Alaska Connecticut Florida Georgia Hawaii Louisiana Michigan North Carolina New Hampshire New Mexico Ohio Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Virginia Industry by city Atlanta Chicago Cleveland Hollywood Jacksonville Kansas City New York San Diego Miscellaneous Box office Hollywood Production companies AFI's 100 Years... National Film Registry

George Lucas
George Lucas in 2009
Born	George Walton Lucas, Jr. (1944-05-14) May 14, 1944 (age 68) Modesto, California, U.S.
Residence	Marin County, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	Modesto Junior College
Alma mater	University of Southern California (B.A. and B.S.)[1]
Occupation	Chairman & CEO of Lucasfilm
Years active	1965–present
Influenced by	Frank Herbert,[2] Joseph Campbell, Akira Kurosawa, John Ford
Home town	Central Valley, California, U.S.
Net worth	US$3.2 billion (2011)[1]
Spouse	Marcia Lucas (1969–1983)
Partner	Mellody Hobson (2007–present)

George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American film producer, screenwriter, director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm.^[3] He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones. Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successful directors/producers, with an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion as of 2011.^[1]

Early life and education[link]

George Lucas was born in Modesto, California, the son of Dorothy Ellinore (née Bomberger) and George Walton Lucas, Sr. (1913–1991), who owned a stationery store.^[4][5]

Lucas grew up in the Central Valley town of Modesto and his early passion for cars and motor racing would eventually serve as inspiration for his USC student film 1:42.08, as well as his Oscar-nominated low-budget phenomenon, American Graffiti. Long before Lucas became obsessed with film making, he wanted to be a race-car driver, and he spent most of his high school years racing on the underground circuit at fairgrounds and hanging out at garages. However, a near-fatal accident in his souped-up Autobianchi Bianchina on June 12, 1962, just days before his high school graduation, quickly changed his mind. Instead of racing, he attended Modesto Junior College and later got accepted into a junior college to study anthropology. While taking liberal arts courses, he developed a passion for cinematography and camera tricks. George Lucas graduated from USC in California.

As a child, Lucas never learned to swim, which became a source of embarrassment and frustration as he became older. Lucas has expressed in several interviews that his inability to swim was "the passion that drove me to succeed in filmmaking... [It] gave me the chip on my shoulder that I think was critical to my later success"^[6]

During this time, an experimental filmmaker named Bruce Baillie tacked up a bedsheet in his backyard in 1960 to screen the work of underground, avant-garde 16 mm filmmakers like Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage and Bruce Conner. For the next few years, Baillie's series, dubbed Canyon Cinema, toured local coffeehouses. These events became a magnet for the teenage Lucas and his boyhood friend John Plummer. The 19-year-olds began slipping away to San Francisco to hang out in jazz clubs and find news of Canyon Cinema screenings in flyers at the City Lights bookstore. Already a promising photographer, Lucas became infatuated with these abstract films.

"That's when he [George] really started exploring" Plummer recalled. "We went to a theater on Union Street that shows art films, we drove up to San Francisco State for a film festival, and there was an old beatnik coffeehouse in Cow Hollow with shorts that were really out there." It was a season of awakening for Lucas, who had been an uninterested slacker in high school. At an autocross track, Lucas met his first mentor in the film industry — famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler, a fellow aficionado of sleek racing machines. Wexler was impressed by the way the shy teenager handled a camera, cradling it low on his hips to get better angles. "George had a very good eye, and he thought visually," Wexler recalls.^[7]

Lucas then transferred to the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. USC was one of the earliest universities to have a school devoted to motion picture film. During the years at USC, George Lucas shared a dorm room with Randal Kleiser. Along with classmates such as Walter Murch, Hal Barwood and John Milius, they became a clique of film students known as The Dirty Dozen. He also became very good friends with fellow acclaimed student filmmaker and future Indiana Jones collaborator, Steven Spielberg. Lucas was deeply influenced by the Filmic Expression course taught at the school by filmmaker Lester Novros which concentrated on the non-narrative elements of Film Form like color, light, movement, space, and time. Another huge inspiration was the Serbian montagist (and dean of the USC Film Department) Slavko Vorkapich, a film theoretician comparable in historical importance to Sergei Eisenstein, who moved to Hollywood to make stunning montage sequences for studio features at MGM, RKO, and Paramount. Vorkapich taught the autonomous nature of the cinematic art form, emphasizing the unique dynamic quality of movement and kinetic energy inherent in motion pictures.

Lucas saw many inspiring films in class, particularly the visual films coming out of the National Film Board of Canada like Arthur Lipsett's 21-87, the French-Canadian cameraman Jean-Claude Labrecque's cinéma vérité 60 Cycles, the work of Norman McLaren, and the documentaries of Claude Jutra. Lucas fell madly in love with pure cinema and quickly became prolific at making 16 mm nonstory noncharacter visual tone poems and cinéma vérité with such titles as Look at Life, Herbie, 1:42.08, The Emperor, Anyone Lived in a Pretty (how) Town, Filmmaker, and 6-18-67. He was passionate and interested in camerawork and editing, defining himself as a filmmaker as opposed to being a director, and he loved making abstract visual films that create emotions purely through cinema.^[7]

After graduating with a bachelor of fine arts in film in 1967, he tried joining the United States Air Force as an officer, but he was immediately turned down because of his numerous speeding tickets. He was later drafted by the Army for military service in Vietnam, but he was exempted from service after medical tests showed he had diabetes, the disease that killed his paternal grandfather.

In 1967, Lucas re-enrolled as a USC graduate student in film production. Working as a teaching instructor for a class of U.S. Navy students who were being taught documentary cinematography, Lucas directed the short film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which won first prize at the 1967–68 National Student Film Festival, and was later adapted into his first full-length feature film, THX 1138. Lucas was awarded a student scholarship by Warner Brothers to observe and work on the making of a film of his choosing. The film he chose was Finian's Rainbow (1968) which was being directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who at the time was revered among film school students of the time as a cinema graduate who had "made it" in Hollywood. In 1969, George Lucas was one of the camera operators on the classic Rolling Stones concert film Gimme Shelter.