Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC is an American film and television production company founded by filmmaker George Lucas in 1971 in San Rafael, California, though most of the company's operations were moved to San Francisco in 2005. It has been a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios since 2012 and is best known for creating and producing the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, as well as its leadership in developing special effects, sound, and computer animation for films.
The company's films Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) are all among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, with The Force Awakens becoming the highest-grossing film in the United States and Canada. On October 30, 2012, Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in the form of cash and stock with $1.855 billion in stock.
History
Independent era (1971–2012) Lucasfilm was founded by filmmaker George Lucas in 1971 in San Rafael, California, and was incorporated as Lucasfilm Ltd. on September 12, 1977. In the mid-1970s, the company's offices were located on the Universal Studios Lot. Lucas founded the Star Wars Corporation, Inc. as a subsidiary to control various legal and financial aspects of Star Wars (1977), including copyright, and sequel and merchandising rights. It also produced the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special for 20th Century Fox Television. That year, Lucas hired Los Angeles-based real-estate specialist Charles Weber to manage the company, telling him that he could keep the job as long as he made money. Lucas wanted the focus of the company to be making independent films, but the company gradually became enlarged from five employees to almost 100, increasing in middle management and running up costs. In 1980, after Weber asked Lucas for fifty million dollars to invest in other companies and suggested that they sell Skywalker Ranch to do so, Lucas fired Weber and had to let half of the Los Angeles staff go. By the same year, the corporate subsidiary had been discontinued and its business was absorbed into the various divisions of Lucasfilm.
Between 1981 and 1989, three Indiana Jones films, stories by Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg, were released. While Return of the Jedi (1983) was in production, Lucas decided not to pursue further Star Wars films. Unhappy with the cinema presentation of Return of the Jedi, he created the company THX, which was unveiled on May 20, 1983. Lucasfilm produced the John Korty-directed animated film Twice Upon a Time (1983). 1985 saw the release of Paul Schrader's Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. The next year, Jim Henson's Labyrinth and an adaptation of Marvel Comics' Howard the Duck were released. Ron Howard directed the fantasy film Willow in 1988 (story by Lucas); the same year the children's animated film The Land Before Time was released. From 1992 to 1993, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series was produced. (created by Lucas) In 1992, after viewing an early computer-generated imagery test created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) for Jurassic Park, Lucas announced his intentions to produce a Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. In 1994, the long-delayed Radioland Murders (story by Lucas) was released. In 1995, Lucas began production on the prequel trilogy. The trilogy took 10 years to make, ending with the release of the third prequel Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith in 2005. In addition to the prequels, Lucas released the Special Editions for the Star Wars Original Trilogy in 1997, 2004 and 2011, for VHS, DVD and Blu-ray.
In 1987, the company, which at that time, was expanding from three to five films a year on its own, decided to increase making its Northern California production facilities available to other filmmakers. In 1989, Lucasfilm launched a new subsidiary Lucasfilm Entertainment Group (later LucasArts Entertainment Company) to consolidate all four units, which are Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm Commercial Productions, Lucasfilm Games, and Sprocket Systems.