Lucasfilm Ltd.
i
Type	Film and television production company
Founded	1971
Founder	George Lucas
Headquarters	Marin County, California, United States
President	Kathleen Kennedy
Parent	The Walt Disney Company
Subsidiaries	Industrial Light & Magic · Skywalker Sound · Lucasfilm Animation · Lucasfilm Games · Lucas Licensing
Website	lucasfilm.com

Lucasfilm Ltd., or simply Lucasfilm (LFL), is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971 and based in Marin County, California. Kathleen Kennedy is its president. Since The Walt Disney Company purchased the studio in October 2012, Lucasfilm has been one of Disney's subsidiaries.

The company is best known for producing the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, though it has made many other box-office hits. Lucasfilm has also been a leader in developing new film technology in special effects, sound design, and computer animation, much of it through its subsidiaries, which include Industrial Light & Magic, Skywalker Sound, and Lucasfilm Animation. Because of their expertise, these subsidiaries often provide services for films that Lucasfilm itself does not produce.

Lucas started Lucasfilm as an independent production company in 1971 so that he could keep creative control over his own films. He had had a difficult time working with Hollywood studios while making THX 1138. The company's first film, American Graffiti, was released through Universal Pictures and earned about US$55 million in rentals.

While making Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, Lucasfilm set up a special-effects shop near Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles. That shop later became the subsidiary Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). The first Star Wars film opened on May 25, 1977, and became a major hit, grossing more than US$307 million. Lucasfilm also signed merchandising deals with companies such as Kenner Products and Marvel Comics for Star Wars clothing, posters, toys, and comics. Income from this merchandising helped Lucas open an early office known as "The Egg Company."

20th Century Fox originally held the copyright to A New Hope, and the merchandising rights were divided 60/40 in Lucas's favor. In 1981, Lucasfilm gained all of the Star Wars intellectual-property and licensing rights that Fox had held, except for the copyright to A New Hope itself, which was finally transferred to Lucasfilm in 1997.

To handle the second film, The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas created a subsidiary called "The Chapter II Company" and moved ILM from Los Angeles to San Francisco. He also bought a ranch in Marin County that became known as Skywalker Ranch. During this period the company produced the spinoff The Star Wars Holiday Special, broadcast by CBS in 1978. The Empire Strikes Back, released on May 21, 1980, grossed nearly US$210 million in its first run.

Charlie Weber served as Lucasfilm's first chief executive but left after The Empire Strikes Back. Lucas wanted to focus on building Skywalker Ranch and making Return of the Jedi, while Weber wanted the company to branch into other businesses. Lucas replaced him with Robert Greber. Return of the Jedi opened on May 25, 1983, and grossed about US$250 million by year's end. Lucasfilm also produced Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), both released through Paramount and both commercial successes.

During the 1980s, Lucas opened ILM up to work on special effects for films made by other studios. Among the films ILM contributed to were Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, The Abyss, the Terminator films, and Jurassic Park. ILM became the leading effects house in the industry and won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects many times.

Lucas continued expanding Skywalker Ranch and imagined Lucasfilm as a full-service company for filmmakers, offering writing retreats, editing equipment, and effects work. He also invested in a startup called THX, which worked to improve the sound quality of movie theaters.

Lucas set up a computer-game division at the company, which grew into LucasArts. It made early non–Star Wars games such as Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus! in partnership with Atari. In 1986, Lucas sold the company's computer-graphics group, along with its "Pixar" computer, to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who turned it into the animation studio Pixar. Over the following years Lucasfilm produced or collaborated on several non–Star Wars projects, including Willow (1988), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. The company also worked with Disney on a Star Wars–themed simulator ride called Star Tours.

After Return of the Jedi, Lucasfilm produced several Star Wars television projects, including the 1984 TV movie Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, its 1985 sequel Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, and the animated series Droids and Ewoks. The two cartoons were meant to support a toy line but did not sell well and were cancelled.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Lucas allowed outside authors and companies to create licensed Star Wars stories, building what fans came to call the Expanded Universe. West End Games produced Star Wars role-playing games beginning in 1987, inventing many new species, ships, and droids. In 1991, author Timothy Zahn's novel Heir to the Empire became a bestseller and launched a long line of tie-in novels. Lucasfilm also signed comic deals with Dark Horse Comics and licensing agreements with companies such as Nintendo and Hasbro.

To keep all of these stories consistent, Lucasfilm built an internal database called the Holocron continuity database, which tracked the franchise's characters, planets, ships, and concepts.

Lucas began writing The Phantom Menace in 1994. It premiered on May 19, 1999, and grossed about US$926 million by year's end. Its sequels, Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005), brought the prequel trilogy's total earnings to roughly US$2.4 billion.

In 1999, Lucas won the right to build a new digital complex at the site of the former Letterman Army Medical Center in the Presidio of San Francisco. In June 2005, Lucasfilm's marketing, online, and licensing units moved into this new home, the Letterman Digital Arts Center, which also housed ILM, THX, and LucasArts.

After the prequels, Lucas planned to scale back film production and run Lucasfilm as a "widget-driven" company centered on books, video games, music, and effects. ILM kept busy with effects for franchises such as Iron Man, Harry Potter, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Inspired by Pixar's success, Lucas created Lucasfilm Animation, which opened a Singapore branch in 2005. The studio produced the 3D animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which premiered on Cartoon Network in 2008 and ran for several seasons.

In May 2011, Lucas met with Disney chief executive Bob Iger at Walt Disney World to discuss selling the company. Afterward, Lucas recruited Kathleen Kennedy, a former president of the Producers Guild of America, as his successor, and the two began developing what became The Force Awakens. Kennedy became co-chair of Lucasfilm in June 2012.

In October 2012, Disney announced that it would buy Lucasfilm. Kennedy was promoted to president of the studio, and she went on to oversee the busiest period in the company's history, producing feature films, live-action and animated series, video games, books, and theme-park experiences.

Lucasfilm operates through several well-known subsidiaries:

• Industrial Light & Magic — the studio's visual-effects division, founded for the first Star Wars film.
• Skywalker Sound — its sound-design and post-production audio division.
• Lucasfilm Animation — its computer-animation studio, responsible for series such as The Clone Wars and Rebels.
• Lucasfilm Games — the brand for the company's video-game projects, relaunched in 2021.
• Lucas Licensing — which manages merchandising and tie-in products.

• Lucasfilm on Wookieepedia
• Lucasfilm on Wikipedia