Troubled Production / Star Wars

It's safe to say Star Wars became one of the most beloved franchises ever by facing productions resembling actual wars. (see also LucasArts for video games)

Film

• Just like Jaws, the other daddy of Summer Blockbusters, the original Star Wars (AKA: Episode IV: A New Hope) made George Lucas suffer as much as his friend Steven Spielberg.
  • The Sci Fi Ghetto made Universal and United Artists pass on the film, and even as Fox picked it up they were reluctant and gave a paltry $8.25 million budget (which eventually escalated to $11 million). Filming was repeatedly held back by rainstorms in a frequently dry Tunisian region and malfunctioning props, and things got so behind schedule that the crew had to split into three units to meet deadlines. The teaser trailer was cobbled together with whatever footage was available, and the film was still delayed from Christmas 1976 to May 1977.
  • There were also troubles with the cast and crew, many of whom didn't really understand or care for the film and often ridiculed the script. Harrison Ford told Lucas "You can type this shit, George, but you sure can't say it.". Sir Alec Guinness hated working on what he considered a children's film, and allegedly demanded that Obi-Wan be killed off just so he wouldn't have to appear in any sequels. Lucas butted heads frequently with Director of Photography Gilbert Taylor, who was insulted at Lucas's micromanagement of his camerawork. And after all that, Mark Hamill was injured in a car accident shortly after filming completed, making reshoots of his scenes impossible.
  • Post-production had Lucas hospitalized for extreme stress, followed by supervising the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits turned visual effects team doing a year's work in six months after blowing half of their budget on shots that were thrown out. Before Lucas arrived, most of their time and money was spent setting up their equipment rather than actually filming, and the only salvageable scene they did was the escape pod's release.
  • The first cut was described as a "complete disaster" when screened to close friends Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma, with Spielberg claiming that an aghast De Palma declared that the cut was "nonsense". Lucas hired two editors as well as his then-wife, Marcia Lucas, to salvage the movie. It involved radically restructuring the first third of the film^note Luke was originally introduced seeing the space battle from the surface, cutting out most of the exposition^note the Opening Crawl was cut in half to the essentials, with De Palma assisting in rewriting, maximizing every frame of footage they had to work with^note Case in point: in the scene where Luke is ambushed by the Tusken Raider on Tatooine, the actor playing the Tusken Raider originally only raised his staff above his head once; the famous shot of the Tusken Raider waving his staff over his head was created by taking the single shot of the actor raising his staff and running the footage back and forth to make it look like he was bellowing a war cry, and giving the Death Star battle new context as approaching the Rebel base through effects shots and dubbed lines for dramatic weight. This video goes into detail of how much was shuffled around in editing, and how masterful the end result turned out is the reason the movie won the Best Editing Oscar, but the process took such a toll on Lucas that he would take 22 years to direct again.
• The Empire Strikes Back, while less brutal in post-production, ran into troubles before and during shooting.
  • Lucas's first choice for writing the script, famous pulp writer Leigh Brackett, died after completing an initial draft for the film, leaving rewrites in the hands of Lucas and newcomer Lawrence Kasdan.
  • In contrast to Lucas, new director Irvin Kershner spent a lot more time setting up takes and encouraged the actors to change lines they felt didn't work. This led to heated arguments between Lucas and Kershner, and these arguments continued into the film's editing process.
  • The crew arrived in Norway to film the Hoth scenes to be greeted by the worst winter storm in years.^note How bad? The scene where Luke escapes from the Wampa lair was achieved by opening the door to their hotel and filming Mark Hamill running outside. And the various locations used, knowing it was a Star Wars film, overcharged the production for their services.
  • Shooting the Dagobah sequence was particularly difficult. The Yoda puppet was made of a less-than-optimal material, resulting in it being quite a bit heavier than what Frank Oz was used to from his time with the Muppets. The strain put on his arms meant the scenes had to be shot on a quite erratic schedule. Because Oz was buried beneath heavy scenery, Mark Hamill couldn't hear what Yoda was saying and had to essentially read the puppet's lips in order to know when to come in with his line^note Hamill used an earpiece during rehearsals but (1970's technology being what it was) couldn't have it in during filming, resulting in mistimed cues. Also, Irvin Kershner developed respiratory problems due to the smoke being used for the swamp's fog and wore a gas mask to cope. Hamill also had some issues with the smoke but had to tough it out.
  • Lucas wanted to keep the film out of any studio's hands and financed it himself, but producer Gary Kurtz allowed production to go far over budget - which wasn't helped when the set of The Shining, being filmed concurrently within the same studio complex as Empire, suffered severe fire damage which also affected Empire. The budget of Empire ran triple that of the original film, and Lucas was forced to take out a loan with 20th Century Fox as his security.
  • Then there's the tragedy of John Barry, the production designer for the original Star Wars as well as the Superman films, who was assigned as 2nd unit director to help make up for lost time during the crazy things happening in Norway. During one of his breaks, he flew to Africa, contracted meningitis, and on his return, died right when he wanted to take a break to get a health check. This would have lasting repercussions for the next film, as Lucas had earmarked Barry to direct it, forcing him to start his search from scratch.
• As for the final part of the Original Trilogy, Return of the Jedi, it may not have been as contentious as A New Hope or Empire, but the production crew certainly faced their own problems according to J.W. Rinzler's "Making of Return of the Jedi" book:
  • Lucas, having been fined by the Director's Guild of America over Empire not having opening credits^note they passed on fining Lucas over the first film as they believed it wouldn't be worth the effort, left the DGA in protest. This forced Steven Spielberg to turn down an offer to direct Jedi over concern he would incur the wrath of the DGA for working on a non-union film. Several of Lucas's other choices for director, including David Lynch and David Cronenberg, also turned down the film. Lucas finally settled on Richard Marquand after a long hunt.
  • During pre-production, Lucas, Marquand and Kasdan would constantly argue over story beats and setpieces, with Lucas and Kasdan getting into heated discussions over the film's Lighter and Softer tone and whether to scrap Endor entirely in favor of setting the climactic battle on Had Abbadon, the supposed Imperial "home planet".
  • Marquand and Lucas came into frequent conflicts during filming. Not only was Lucas constantly on-set when Marquand directed, but the former would often give the actors advice contrary to Marquand's direction. Likewise, Marquand alienated several of the actors, with both Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill accusing the director of treating them terribly while simultaneously fawning over Harrison Ford's performance. Ford, for his part, is said to have not appreciated nor forgiven Marquand's favoritism at the expense of his co-stars.
  • Principal photography was beset with numerous delays and clashes between Lucas and Marquand, with the former wanting to use multiple cameras during each take so he could have more material in the editing room, and the latter wanting only one or two cameras with no fallback option. Lucas would frequently go behind Marquand's back and have extra cameras brought on set before Marquand arrived, resulting in flared tempers and arguments.
  • Lucas' creative choices alienated several crew members through production. Cinematographer Alan Hume, who was angered over Lucas' treatment of Marquand, informally stepped away from his duties, leaving camera operator Alec Mills to finish filming in the last month of production. Ralph McQuarrie became burned out because of his constant work on the film and his hatred of the Ewok concept, and walked away from the production. The producer of the previous two films, Gary Kurtz, split up with Lucasfilm due to a combo of the budget overruns on Empire and his dislike of the direction Lucas was taking the series with the film, believing it was becoming too safe and Merchandise-Driven.
  • Lucas also ran into budget problems as a result of ensuring his loan with Fox after the release of Empire, to the point of interfering with filming. Marquand had to beg Lucas for a Rancor hand prop to be constructed so that close-ups of Hamill could be filmed.
  • The infamous "Black Friday" incident, where 100,000 feet of film stock containing effects shots that couldn't be read in an optical printer were unceremoniously dumped by Lucas himself. The crew at ILM were forced to go back to the drawing board and start again from scratch, with many getting drunk when they heard the news. Marquand also inadvertently used old film stock that caused many shots to have a bizarre blue tint, which forced ILM to fix the color timing on many shots in post-production. This was the last straw for Lucas, who reportedly locked Marquand out of the editing room.
  • The first screening of the film (using an early cut) was reportedly a disaster, with Lucas deriding the editing and the fact that it didn't feel like a Star Wars film. Eventually, one of the film editors, Sean Barton, did his own cut that Lucas preferred a lot more, and it was this cut that the final version was crafted from.
• The Force Awakens had filming itself going very well, but with some outstanding issues.
  • Early on in filming, Harrison Ford injured his leg while filming a scene on the Millennium Falcon. Faulty hydraulics caused a door to close at the wrong time. Initial reports claimed it to be a minor ankle injury, but it was later revealed Ford had broken a leg. Criminal charges were filed against LucasFilm for set negligence, and the case was settled with a hefty fee.
  • Before the film even began, the pre-production phase was rather tumultuous. Michael Arndt was hired to write a script based on a story outline by George Lucas. When J. J. Abrams was hired as director, Arndt's script was allegedly trashed so that writing could start from scratch with Lawrence Kasdan attached (though the truth of these claims is in dispute). In addition, Abrams' own film studio, Bad Robot, reportedly clashed with LucasFilm during principal photography.
• Production issues with the anthology film Rogue One were largely kept under wraps compared to Solo, but issues with the film's third act led to costly reshoots. Tony Gilroy was brought in to direct the reshoots, replacing credited director Gareth Edwards as the film was, in Gilroy's words, in terrible trouble. This lead to the budget ballooning to $200–265 million, making the film roughly as expensive as The Force Awakens.
• Solo was a mess comparable to the original trilogy:
  • It hit a massive snag in what was supposed to be the final weeks of filming after directors Phil Lord & Chris Miller left the production in June 2017 after four months of shooting. Reports differ whether the directors voluntarily left or were fired. There was reportedly applause when word came to the set that they were leaving.
  • An anonymous source stated that Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy had problems with them from day one, as they had very different ideas about what the film should be ^note Lord and Miller wanted to make it a comedy similar to the Guardians of the Galaxy, whilst Lucasfilm wanted a straightforward drama. and refused to compromise. Their fondness for letting actors improvise also wasn't seen kindly by many, and writer Lawrence Kasdan even came to the set to chew them out over it, resulting in a deal similar to the one struck on The Birdcage that at least one take of every scene would be shot exactly as scripted before the improvising started. Emilia Clarke claimed in an interview just before the film's release that Lord and Miller only gave the main actors very vague directions on how to portray their characters (including telling her at one point to "play it film noir"), and told them to just focus on the improvisational comedy.
  • There were some issues with the script, with Lord and Miller noticing that there were inconsistencies and plot holes. However, their efforts at polishing the screenplay were dismissed and the producers told them to shoot the film as it was written.
  • Ron Howard eventually signed on to complete the principal photography and nearly a month of reshoots and original editor Chris Dickens was also replaced with longtime Ridley Scott editor Pietro Scalia. Ultimately, Howard ended up dragging the production overtime by reshooting almost the entirety of the film—with 80 percent of the finished product being his work—effectively demoting Lord and Miller to executive producers.^note Union rules state that a replacement director who has shot at least 51% of a film will get sole credit.
  • Reportedly, the studio wasn't satisfied with the performance of Alden Ehrenreich as Solo and hired an acting coach midway through production, and Ehrenreich also complained to the producers that the directors were pushing him to give a performance akin to "Ace Ventura".
  • Because the change in directors resulted in the production going overschedule by months, Michael K. Williams' version of his character Dryden Vos had to be completely removed from the film. Williams had completed principal photography but wasn't available for reshoots as he was already involved in production for Hap and Leonard. Paul Bettany, already under contract with Disney for his role as J.A.R.V.I.S./Vision in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, stepped in to replace him.
  • Due to extended production and extensive reshoots, the budget for the film reportedly ended up being twice what was originally allocated. The extensive retooling also left the film with little viable footage for advertising with the first trailer appearing only three months before its May 25th release.^note For reference, Avengers: Infinity War had its first public trailer released a full 6 months before its release date, whilst the teaser for The Force Awakens debuted over a year before its release.
  • When it came time to market the film, the campaign hit a setback in 2018. In March of that year, a French artist accused Disney of plagiarizing several posters he made for Sony France, leading to Disney and Lucasfilm hastily commissioning a new set of posters. The fact that the posters were made by a third party without proper oversight didn't do much to fix perceptions.
• The Rise of Skywalker hit several snags long before it started filming.
  • First, Carrie Fisher, whose character Leia was reportedly set to have a much larger role than she had had in the prior two films, died in December 2016. This caused havoc on the writing process as it was later revealed that there was actually very little forward planning being done with the franchise, meaning they'd lost one of the very few things they were working towards (the filmmakers had planned on Episode VII largely being a sendoff for Han, Episode VIII being a sendoff for Luke, and Episode IX being a sendoff for Leia).
  • In September 2017, Colin Trevorrow and writer Jack Thorne, who had been attached to Episode IX and was a scant few months from filming, left the project under the vague umbrella of Creative Differences. Trevorrow's departure might have also been influenced by allegedly egotistical behavior on his productions. A draft for Trevorrow's Episode IX (titled Duel of the Fates) would leak in early 2020, revealing that it was a vastly different film than what Rise of Skywalker became.
  • After the departure of Trevorrow and Thorne, Rian Johnson was asked to stay on after completing The Last Jedi, but turned down the offer. J. J. Abrams then signed on to return as director and the release date was pushed back from a Summer 2019 release to December 20, 2019. The late start meant that production was heavily rushed. In September 2020, Daisy Ridley gave an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that revealed that Abrams was indecisive on important plot points (including whether Rey was related to Palpatine or Obi-Wan Kenobi) even in the middle of filming, often leaving the actors adrift with no idea about the nature of their own characters. The film's editor, Maryann Brandon, stated that editing was particularly affected by the accelerated schedule, which had ripple effects across all aspects of production, including the writing. Information leaks also plagued the film, with outlines of the film's major plot points ending up on Reddit well before the film's release.

TV Shows / Specials

• The Star Wars Holiday Special, a variety special broadcast (only once) in late 1978 to capitalize on the burgeoning phenomenon of the franchise and as a way to promote the then-upcoming The Empire Strikes Back, ran into problems from the get-go.
  • Originally envisioned as being "just a film about Wookiees, nothing else," CBS pitched the idea to George Lucas — who loved the idea, but had a hands-off approach to the process, instead leaving the brunt of the work to producer Gary Kurtz, as Lucas was in the process of moving the offices of his production company. Despite the best intentions of the executives and writers, the collaborative process was hampered by a lack of time and disagreements over the focus of the special — co-writer Bruce Vilanch (who also admitted he was high on cocaine while writing parts of the script) attempted to sway Lucas away from focusing solely on a race that needed subtitles for its dialogue, but Lucas refused to budge (Foreshadowing issues that would rear their head in later productions associated with the franchise).
  • The first director, David Acomba, was a former classmate of Lucas' from the University of Southern California, and was originally brought in to bring a different vision to the reality show format, but a lack of familiarity with multiple-camera setups and disagreements with producers led him to depart, and he was replaced by Steve Binder, who has since admitted in later interviews that he was a hired gun whose only contact with Lucasfilm was through a document that outlined the chronology of the Wookiee species.
  • Not helping matters was that several of the cast members were undergoing personal challenges. Mark Hamill was on the mend after the car crash he was involved in after shooting wrapped on the first film, resulting in him being covered in makeup and relegated to a handful of static appearances on a videoscreen. Carrie Fisher (who would later admit to being high during shooting of scenes on Hoth during Empire) is shown being visibly... off during the two scenes she appears in, while several of the extras during the Cantina scene had to deal with breathing problems related to the costumes they wore. The resulting special became a disgrace for the production crew and cast, with many refusing to talk about it or acknowledge it in any way (including Lucas, who said on more than one occasion that if he could, he would track down "every copy of the special and smash it with a sledgehammer."). Fisher was able to find some humor out of the awfulness of the final product by keeping the one-and-only official copy in her possession and popping it in her tape player to signal to guests she wanted them to leave.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars has become one of the most acclaimed and beloved additions to the Star Wars franchise, but much like the film counterparts, creating such an ambitious and complicated series was no easy task.
  • The first major woe experienced was the production of the Clone Wars movie, which Lucas pushed to have released in theaters. The production staff was already working hard to create the television series that had state-of-the-art animation. They were also establishing a new animation studio at the time, so the extra work a film required made life much harder. Producer Catherine Winder described the situation as a "50 million per hour story being told with a 2 million per hour budget." What started off as the first three story arcs was combined to a feature film that was not acclaimed upon release, mainly due to how the film clearly did not resemble something meant to be put in theaters as well as the childish and softer tone. Despite this, the earnings made were enough to push forward with Season 1.
  • While much of the production during the series' lifetime was relatively calm, the series faced cancellation when Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012 which would have brought an end to Cartoon Network's airing of the series. The producers were forced to wrap up production as Disney did not want to continue the series due to the now darker and edgier tone it had compared to what Disney was used to airing. While Season 5 was able to air on Cartoon Network, Season 6 was still in production and was eventually released on Netflix, while several story arcs that would have been used in Season 7 and a planned Season 8 were never finished.
  • Years passed before Disney decided to revive the series for a final season, using one of the story arcs left on the cutting room floor and building two new arcs from the ground up. Dave Filoni struggled to build a new story arc that explained Ahsoka's new perspective on the war and the Republic as a whole, wanting to create a narrative that was satisfying. In the end it paid off, with critical acclaim given to the final season for giving the proper sendoff the series needed.

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