Sci Fi Trifles: Useless but essential pop culture tidbits and trivia from the worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror that once you have read them you don’t know how you have lived so long without knowing them.
We all know that Star Wars was a huge box office success when it first came out in 1977 and it helped changed the course of Hollywood as well as the science fiction genre. But prior to its release, studio execs did not expect the movie to be a blockbuster success (they actually had their hopes pinned on another of that year’s sci fi films). And did you know that George Lucas had a low-budget sequel planned in case Star Wars did not score too well at the box office?
Star Wars was seen as a gamble by many prior to its release, and the science fiction genre had not typically produced box office gold in the theaters (though the previous year’s Logan’s Run did deliver a respectable tally). Lucas, though, apparently had faith in his project and had worked out a Plan B to continue the story if the first movie did not score huge returns at the box office. He had brought in science fiction author Alan Dean Foster to ghostwrite the novelization of Star Wars and he also tasked him with producing a follow-up novel that could also act as a low-budget sequel to the first movie. Foster was given a fair amount of freedom with the book, but he was advised to produce a story that could be adapted to the big screen (or maybe even television?) on an economical budget. Of course none of this mattered because Star Wars was a huge hit (and is currently the fourth highest grossing film of all time) and Lucas got to carry on his story with no budget constraints.
But what of the story that Foster he penned as the possible sequel? Devoted Star Wars fans will already know that it lived on as the novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. It hit the stores one year after the movie was released and became the first book in what would come to be known as the Expanded Universe. His story was planet-bound in order to keep costs down and it only included five returning characters from the movie: Luke, Leia, C-3PO, R2-D2, and Darth Vader. The book was well received by countless fans eager to devour any Star Wars related product available at the time. And even though it never did get a film treatment, we’re sure there are plenty of people out there that would much rather have seen a big screen adaptation of Foster’s book (big budget or not) than the prequel movies that George Lucas cranked out many years later!
Source: Wikipedia
More Sci Fi Trifles at This Link
Buy Splinter of the Mind’s Eye and Other Expanded Universe Books from Amazon.com:
