After the 1973 success of American Graffiti, filmmaker George Lucas made the fateful decision to pursue a long-time dream project: a space opera fantasy movie unlike any ever produced. Lucas envisioned a swashbuckling SF saga inspired bythe Flash Gordon serials classic American westerns, the epic cinema of Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa, and mythological heroes. Its original title: The Star Wars.
The rest is history.