Ron Howard Recalls the Moment George Lucas Shared His STAR WARS Idea With Him

During Lucasfilm’s Light & Magic panel at Star Wars Celebration, Ron Howard recalled the first time that George Lucas shared his idea for Star Wars with him. Before we jump into that, though, Light & Magic is a six-part documentary about the early days of Industrial Light & Magic when they were creating Star Wars.

That docuseries was developed by Lawrence Kasdan, the talented writer behind films such as The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, and Solo.

Now, if you ever wondered how George Lucas was describing Star Wars to people years before he started developing it, you’re going to enjoy this.

Howard was working on Lucas’ 1973 film American Graffiti when he asked the director what his next project was. This is what Howard said about this experience in a clip that was shared for the doc:

“One day I was hanging around Mel’s Diner, and I asked George, ‘what do you think you want to do next?’ And he said, ‘well I kinda like science fiction. The advances Kubrick made, I want to apply that to a Buck Rogers / Flash Gordon kind of movie, like a movie serial. Combine that with 2001 special effects, but the ships go super fast.’ That’s kind of all he said to me.”

I love that, I love where Lucas’ mind was at when he was forming this crazy Star Wars project in his head. He had no idea at the time how impactful this film would be! It’s amazing to see how far Star Wars has come!

Howard went on to talk about how mind-blowing it was for him when he actually sat down in a theater and watched the movie. He said he stood in line for a couple of hours to see it on opening weekend, saw it, and was so blown away that he left the theater and asked his wife if she wanted to see it again and she said, “Oh yeah!” They saw it again on the same day.

I just thought that was a cool story and wanted to share!