George Lucas being denied the rights to Flash Gordon led to the film that cemented his legacy.
The Big Picture In the mid-1970s, George Lucas was coming off a huge hit. After the appreciated but not financially successful THX-1138, Lucas made a film that was a huge critical and commercial hit, that also garnered him two Academy Award nominations for writing and directing. American Graffiti may not have taken home a single Oscar, but more importantly, it afforded Lucas the opportunity to take a big swing on a project he had had in his mind for years.
Dino De Laurentiis, the Italian producer who had worked with Federico Fellini on La Strada and Nights of Cabira before attuning to more genre fare like Serpico, Blue Velvet, and Manhunter, had held the rights to Flash Gordon since the 1980s While attempting to secure funding with Francis Ford Coppola for American Graffiti, Lucas also took a meeting in regards to optioning Flash Gordon.
After constant work, and the framing inspired by Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, Lucas had the script he wanted. As he told The ASC, "I'm trying to make a classic sort of genre picture, a classic space fantasy in which all the influences are working together.
Losing Out on the 'Flash Gordon' Adaptation Gave George Lucas the Bandwidth To Focus on 'Star Wars' Without the rights to Flash Gordon, George Lucas had to create his own story. He had to dig deep and be creative. Additionally, because his vision hadn't been done before, Lucas and company had to work within a limited budget and use plenty of creative problem-solving to make Star Wars what it was.
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