Happy 45th birthday, 'Star Wars': The Force is still strong with George Lucas's little space opera that could

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Jeff Spry is an award-winning screenwriter and veteran freelance journalist covering TV, movies, video games, books, and comics. His work has appeared at SYFY Wire, Inverse, Collider, Bleeding Cool and elsewhere. Jeff lives in beautiful Bend, Oregon amid the ponderosa pines, classic muscle cars, a crypt of collector horror comics, and two loyal English Setters.

It opened in just 32 theaters but was quickly expanded to 43 over the blockbuster debut weekend as fans camped out for hours for a chance to snag a coveted ticket to see cosmic heroes and villains clash on alien planets. By the peak mania for"Star Wars" in late summer 1977, the sprawling space saga was playing in a stratospheric 1,098 theaters across America, with the longest-running engagement being 76 weeks at the Westgate Theater in Portland, Oregon.

Lucas was a hot commodity in Hollywood after the huge success of"American Graffiti" in 1973. He shifted his attention from hot-rods to sci-fi with a 13-page treatment for"The Star Wars" that he pitched to Universal Studios and United Artists, who declined. But a visionary executive at 20th Century Fox named Alan Ladd Jr. saw the potential in the project and greenlit the movie.

What helped sell the film was a series of 21 drawings Lucas commissioned from acclaimed illustrator Ralph McQuarrie, which contained dramatic scenes of Luke Starkiller clashing with

 

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