Star Wars is 40 years old! And it’s not ending soon
The date was 1977, and no one had yet worn a copper bikini to bed, made “whooshing” light saber noises with a broomstick or yelled “May the Fourth be with you” at strangers.
But that was all about to change as a 33-year-old Californian filmmaker named George Walton Lucas Jr. prepared to release his third feature – a far-fetched, slightly corny intergalactic saga of good and evil starring a sulky farm boy with daddy issues. Jump forward 40 years and
Star Wars has grown into the most lucrative and influential movie franchise of all time.
“I’m running out of hyperbolic adjectives to describe the power of Star Wars, but that’s because it is the ultimate standard-bearer,” Shawn Robbins, chief analyst for BoxOffice. com, told AFP.
“Four decades of recordbreaking, genre-defining entertainment across film, television, video games, toys, books and everything else the brand has touched simply speaks for itself.”
With its indie flick budget of just $11 million, the brashlooking Star Wars opened on Wednesday, May 25, 1977 – the anniversary falls on Thursday – on an inauspicious 32 screens, taking in $1.6 million on its first weekend. Starring relative newcomers Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford as swashbuckling Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo, it benefited from word-of-mouth buzz and the crowds lining up to see it quickly grew exponentially.
Its first theatrical run ended with a phenomenal $221.3 million while reissues by 20th Century Fox brought the total to more than twice that amount.
The premiere was at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, where it played to sold-out audiences five times a day for over a year, according to resident historian Levi Tinker, who said the crowds literally wore out the handwoven Chinese carpet in the lobby. Two sequels – The Empire
Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) – grossed more than $450 million each worldwide, but there were sizeable bumps in the road ahead. Lucas’s 1997 “special edition” reissues were met with jeers thanks to digital tweaks deemed unnecessary or downright off-putting.
Speculation is already building over the future of the franchise with the approach of the final movies by 2020 but, long before then, fans have Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi – the second of the sequels – to look forward to in December.
It continues seamlessly from The Force Awaken (2015),
which became one of three films in history to take $2 billion after posting the biggest domestic and worldwide debuts ever.
“The Last Jedi now has the potential to challenge those numbers and – particularly given the goodwill generated by The Force Awakens and
Rogue One – it is set up to be an absolute monster,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior analyst at comScore.
Jeff Bock, of Exhibitor Relations, believes the death of Fisher will give The Last
Jedi a boost. In any case, experts agree that LucasFilm is unlikely to want to let go of a franchise which can add $1-2 billion with each new release.
“Like the universe itself, Star Wars will just keep expanding into the infinite,” said Bock.
“Literally, there is no end in sight for this franchise.”