Star Wars Will Be a Bomb | 6

Inside Star Wars

Wondery

Documentary, Film History, Tv & Film, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2019

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Shooting on Star Wars wraps, but the troubles are far from over. Lucas has to “crack the whip” at ILM, which is way behind on FX shots. Lucas discovers the perfect voice for Darth Vader. The John Williams score is finished and Lucas is moved to tears. He screens the film for his movie friends and the reception is ugly. The FOX sales team loves the movie, but the studio board is convinced they’re wrong - Star Wars will be an enormous bomb, they believe. So they move the release date early and dump it into a small number of theaters before it’s forgotten forever. And then, Star Wars premieres and is a phenomenon. Lines around the block everywhere. Lucas vacations with Spielberg and tosses out an idea for another movie, one led by a character named “Indiana Smith.” Lucas negotiates the sequels, then takes a long vacation from Star Wars until a new series of prequels. And that’s when the backlash begins.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Prime members, you can listen to Inside Star Wars ad free on Amazon Music.
0:05.4	Download the app today.
0:07.0	The following may contain mature content.
0:15.0	From Wundry, I'm Mark Ramsey, and this is Inside Star Wars.
0:24.6	Part six. On July 16, 19, 16, 1976, principal shooting wrapped on Star.
0:46.7	In July 16, 1976, principal shooting wrapped on Star Wars. George Lucas was 20 days behind schedule and remarkably close to budget
0:51.2	thanks to a devalued British pound.
0:53.9	But over budget is over budget.
0:56.8	And so Fox did what its contracts said it could do.
1:00.7	They took part of George Lucas's directorial fee as compensation.
1:05.0	Shooting was over.
1:08.0	That chapter was closed, but the troubles were far from over.
1:12.0	They were just different.
1:18.7	Lucas had to crack the whip at ILM.
1:21.9	Everybody, everybody can I have your attention please. Country club hours are over.
1:30.0	Look, I know we don't have air conditioning in this building, but we can't do all our work at night.
1:37.0	And no more makeshift pools and water slides.
1:41.7	And what I saw on my way in today, that can never happen again.
1:45.0	What he saw was John Dykstra, one of ILM's founders,
1:50.0	in the parking lot at the controls of a forklift.
1:55.0	Balance precariously in the forks, a full-size refrigerator. Yeah, no more of that.
2:07.0	Hey George, you have to understand. We've never worked on anything that's
	...

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