2024-05-14 07:59:04
Lucas, Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola: they shaped “New Hollywood” in the 70s. They continue to make films – only Lucas is retired as a director. The “Star Wars” creator has other passion projects.
The Angels.
Just a few days after his 80th birthday, George Lucas will receive a very special gift on the Croisette. At the 77th Cannes Film Festival on the French Mediterranean coast, the Hollywood star is to receive the Golden Palm of Honor for his life’s work.
The cinema legend, who is inextricably linked to “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones”, has forever given blockbuster films a “splendid history” and viewers all over the world a “unique pleasure”, the organizers paid tribute when announcing the award. The award for the director, screenwriter and producer is planned as the culmination of the festival on May 25th. This Tuesday (May 14th) Lucas turns 80 years old.
Heart’s desire – your own museum
The filmmaker is rarely in the spotlight anymore. The “Star Wars” creator sold his legendary production company Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 for around four billion dollars. He then largely withdrew from the film business. Since then, Lucas has scaled back appearances and other engagements “exponentially,” his team of spokespersons said at the request of the German Press Agency. Unfortunately, they would also have to decline the interview request. Lucas would enjoy his retirement and also concentrate on building his museum, it said.
In 2018, the foundation stone was laid for the long-planned project in Los Angeles. Lucas, his wife Mellody Hobson and directors Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola were at the ceremony. The museum should fire the imagination of visitors and inspire them to dream “beyond what is thought possible,” said Lucas, according to a statement from the “Lucas Museum of Narrative Art”.
The core of the art collection comes from his private collection. According to his own statements, Lucas was interested in painting, drawings, comics and later digital art since his youth and collected many works – in addition to film art objects, paintings by Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Norman Rockwell. The futuristic building designed by Chinese architect Ma Yansong is scheduled to be completed in 2025. Lucas wants to finance the construction and operating costs of more than a billion dollars out of his own pocket.
That shouldn’t be a problem for Lucas, according to the figures from the business magazine Forbes. In the ranking of the richest stars published in April, the filmmaker took first place – with an estimated fortune of $5.5 billion, followed by Steven Spielberg with $4.8 billion.
Lucas grew up in rural Modesto, far from Hollywood, as the son of a stationery salesman with three sisters. Even later he kept his distance from the film metropolis. His home is Skywalker Ranch in rural Marin County, north of San Francisco. He has three adult adopted children. In 2013, Lucas became a father again at the age of 69. A few months earlier he had married his partner Mellody Hobson, who was more than 20 years his junior. Daughter Everest was born to a surrogate mother.
Lucas, who became friends with Francis Ford Coppola as a film student in Los Angeles, had an early nose for stories and talent. For his first directorial success, “American Graffiti” (1973), he hired the then unknown young actors Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford. The teen film revolved around high school students in a
small Californian town. As a screenwriter and director, Lucas was nominated for two Oscars.
“Star Wars” in the garage
Lucas made his first “Star Wars” film with a small team in a garage in a suburb of Los Angeles, and a little later he founded the special effects empire Industrial Light & Magic near San Francisco. His space fairy tale “Star Wars” won six trophies at the 1978 Academy Awards, including for music, sound and special effects. Lucas was nominated as director and screenwriter.
In contrast to his good friend Spielberg, whom he later supported with ideas and as a producer on the legendary adventure film series “Indiana Jones”, Lucas never won an Oscar in competition. The Film Academy only gave him the Irving Thalberg Honorary Prize in 1992 for his services as a producer.
It’s now been almost 20 years since Lucas was last behind the camera as Star Warrior director on “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” (2005). In 2012, the billion-dollar finale came when he sold his “Star Wars” universe with the company Lucasfilm to the entertainment giant Disney. Three years later, the seventh “Star Wars” film came to the screen with “The Force Awakens” (2015), directed by JJ Abrams.
Lucas reacted melancholically – and also critically. The result was a “retro” film instead of creating a truly new work with new planets and spaceships, he complained in an interview with PBS journalist Charlie Rose in 2015. “These are my children. All the ‘Star Wars’ movies,” Lucas said. “I love them, I created them, I am very close to them.” The separation was “very, very, very difficult”. (dpa)
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