production - What is the origin of all Star Wars movies?

Please dispel (or confirm, but I doubt) this thing I keep hearing about Star Wars. I heard that all 6 Star Wars movies had been written many years before their filming, even before the first movie came out. This is something that came to me over the years in bits and pieces. I remember some basic elements, namely:

That the movies started with episode IV because at the time (1977), filming an all city planet like Coruscant was technologically impossible.

That the original character that became JarJar Binks was actually an engineer/inventor of sorts, and smart.

Answer

According to The Making of The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas wrote out a guide that eventually became the original trilogy, but after submitting it to Fox, they said cut it down to the size of one movie, which became A New Hope.

Before The Empire Strikes Back, there was at least some sort of guide, or at least thoughts in Lucas' head, but the script went under a huge number of changes between the original Brackett script.

As for why Empire was numbered 5, the same book says that it was originally titled Star Wars II; the five was added later after Lucas decided he wanted to explore Vader's past. The reason it was the first numbered movie was because Lucas didn't have the idea for a prequel trilogy until Empire was written.

Comments

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