when did george lucas come up with the idea of star wars
Star Wars In 1971, Lucas signed a contract with Universal Studios to direct two films. He intended one of them to be a space opera; however, knowing film studios were skeptical about the genre, Lucas decided to direct his other idea first, American Graffiti, a coming-of-age story set in the 1960s. In 1973, Lucas started work on his second film's script draft of The Journal of the Whills, a space opera telling the tale of the training of apprentice CJ Thorpe as a "Jedi-Bendu" space commando by the legendary Mace Windy. After Universal rejected the film, 20th Century Fox decided to invest in it.[18] On April 17, 1973, Lucas felt frustrated about his story being too difficult to understand, so he began writing a 13-page script with thematic parallels to Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress; this draft was renamed The Star Wars.[19] By 1974, he had expanded the script into a rough draft screenplay, adding elements such as the Sith, the Death Star, and a protagonist named Annikin Starkiller. Numerous subsequent drafts evolved into the script of the original film.[citation needed]