SUMMARY

  • George Lucas aspired to make a Flash Gordon film before deciding to make an original story with Star Wars.
  • The asking price for the rights of the IP were to high for George Lucas at the time.
  • Lucas could make a modern adaptation of the character today.

Star Wars became a cultural phenomenon under the leadership of George Lucas. From the Original Trilogy to all the narrative pieces that are now considered part of the Legends timeline. While now the property is in the hands of Disney, Lucas could go back to the drawing board, realizing one of his greatest dreams with his fortune, should he ever want to move on from Star Wars.

luke skywalker mark hamill star warsLuke Skywalker || Credit: Lucasfilm

While Star Wars is one of the most recognizable space operas of our times, George Lucas was obsessed with a different one which he wanted to adapt. Back when Star Wars was a figment of Lucas’ imagination, the legendary director wanted to do a Flash Gordon film, but the rights for the film seemed to be a little too out of his ballpark then.

King Features really did not want to part with the rights for Flash Gordon

image 1600x900 1Flash Gordon || Starling Productions

Flash Gordon was one of George Lucas’ favorite stories and was initially the property that he wanted to adapt. The director spoke about his attempts to make a Flash Gordon film, revealing:

I loved the Flash Gordon comic books. I loved the Universal serials with Buster Crabbe. After THX 1138 I wanted to do Flash Gordon and tried to buy the rights to it from Kings Features, but they wanted a lot of money for it, more than I could afford then. They didn’t really want to part with the rights–they wanted Fellini to do Flash Gordon.

Flash Gordon was still a hot property when George Lucas was young, and his inability to acquire the rights to the film led him to create Star Wars, which took a lot of story beats from Flash Gordon, which in turn took a lot of inspiration from John Carter of Mars.

George Lucas could take a shot at Flash Gordon by himself

George LucasHollywood filmmaker George Lucas (image credit: Joey Gannon/CC BY-SA 2.0/Wikimedia Commons

While George Lucas might not have had the money to adapt Flash Gordon back then, the director has more than earned his reputation as a legendary director today. Flash Gordon might be a property that would require some updates to play with today’s audiences, which might be right up Geroge Lucas’ ally.

The creator has also said that he would like to make films, that above all else, cater to him, so there is little in his way when it comes to acquiring the rights of Flash Gordon and producing a film based on the character. However, given that Star Wars was a direct result of his not being able to make a Flash Gordon film, Lucas might stick to the say he has in Star Wars films.

Flash GordonGeorge Lucas

Written by Anuraag Chatterjee

Articles Published: 1208

Anuraag Chatterjee, Web Content Writer
With a passion for writing fiction and non fiction content, Anuraag is a Media Science graduate with 2 year's experience with Marketing and Content, with 3 published poetry anthologies. Anuraag holds a Bacherlor's degree in Arts with a focus on Communication and Media Studies.