A long time ago, in a cluster of north American movie theaters far smaller than the 34,000-screen galaxy we have today, George Lucas hit box office hyperdrive with the release of Star Wars — and sparked a strange suggestion from his friend and mentor Francis Ford Coppola.
With the 1977 sci-fi spectacle raising Lucas' media profile to stratospheric levels, Godfather auteur Coppola told the filmmaker it was time to broaden his ambitions. He seriously proposed that Lucas start a religion, using the murkily defined tenets of ''the Force'' as a central holy text.
The heck with the Beatles. Star Wars was bigger than Jesus.
''That was Francis' thing,'' says Lucas, rolling his eyes and shaking his head like a reproving parent. ''Francis in his grandeur. I remember him saying, 'You know, you've got a certain amount of power in politics. But religion! With religion, you really have power.' I told him, 'Forget it. I don't have any interest in power.'''
Interested or not, Lucas has certainly wound up with an imperial rank in the movie business. As he gears up to complete Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace in time for its just-announced May 19 opening (moved up from May 21), the 54-year-old writer-producer-director has, in a sense, put together the decade's ultimate indie flick. Relying on his own funds (as he did with The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi), Lucas has spent four years assembling his 130-minute, $115 million epic — the first of three prequels that will trace young Anakin Skywalker's rise to Jedi knight and his ultimate surrender to the Dark Side. He did it without a lick of interference from a single studio exec. And he didn't have to cast Hollywood superstars to raise his money, settling instead on a Scotsman (Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi), an Irishman (Liam Neeson as Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn), a couple of American kids (17-year-old Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala and Jake Lloyd as young Anakin, the boy who will, in time, sire Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia), plus the usual complement of British-accented supporting players (including Terence Stamp and Ian McDiarmid). Twentieth Century Fox will receive a distribution fee to release The Phantom Menace and will handle some marketing costs, but that's about as far as its involvement goes. There have been no brainstorming meetings with suit-clad ''creatives,'' no ''notes'' or suggestions, and no extended rounds of focus groups.
Even modest industry estimates suggest The Phantom Menace will generate more than $1 billion in global ticket sales — quite a hefty garnish to the initial trilogy's $1.8 billion worldwide gross and an estimated $4 billion in merchandising. A pessimistic Lucas says he'd be surprised if the new film makes more than $400 million in its initial North American run. Whatever the numbers, he seems to be happy for once with his work.
That's mainly because digital F/X, in their infancy when Jedi wrapped in 1983, have expanded the canvas exponentially. ''It's the movie I've always wanted to see but had never been able to make,'' says Lucas from a plush velvet chair in his roomy business office at Skywalker Ranch, his 2,700-acre compound 40 miles north of San Francisco. Ever the casual dresser, he's as attached to his standard ceremonial garb as any high priest: white sneakers, blue jeans, flannel shirt with sleeves rolled up. The beard is grayer, the paunch evident, but Lucas' invincibly low hairline and Superman-style forelock still make him seem elfin. He's clearly been energized by directing for the first time in two decades. He delegated Empire and Jedi to others, he says, not because he hated directing, as many have suggested, but because his producing career made it impossible for him to play full-time captain on the set. ''I'm a lazy kind of guy,'' Lucas says.
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