 This is the SF Productions podcast network A long time ago in a theater far far away From the pop culture bunker. I'm Mindy and I'm Mark you can check out our audio podcast How I got my free comics on itunes or on our website SF podcast network calm So if you've been living on Neptune for the last year you may not have heard there's a new Star Wars movie That would probably be it. Yes. There's plenty of coverage of that. So I thought we could talk about the original movie Okay, and you really can't overstate the impact of chapter 4 a new hope in 1977 because it had such a huge impact on both movies and marketing It's really pre and post Star Wars. It is. Yes. It's such a huge change Now you heard about the movie before it came out. I had I had not yes I was a freshman in high school. I was a little bit older than you and I'm pretty sure it must have been starlog I assume it had to be there was no long before the internet and I didn't really read many magazines per se then but I was really into science fiction still then and I Was really really excited. I dragged a friend of mine to the movie the first day the very first showing Yeah, and we didn't even have to wait in line or anything But when we came out afterwards and my friend had no idea what it was going to be about her She was just like over the moon about it after we came out But when we came out there was a line around the movie theater So I think we just got lucky that you know, we got there like for the 12 o'clock or whatever showing Do you remember the name of the theater? Yeah, I don't remember the name of the theater, but it was the Movie theater that was in Brookfield Square shopping center at the time And my mom probably drove us to work when she drove us there when she was driving to work that day or something And because of course we wouldn't have had driver's license Yeah And it was it was either still a single screen or maybe they had converted it into a two-screen theater by that time But it was certainly not a multiplex. Yeah, you know well I saw yeah I saw it at the McKinley theater in Canton which is no longer there and Then ended up seeing it many times at the Belden Village twin, which is also no longer there Yeah, and you know the Belden Village is a lot like what Brookfield Square was like and and I imagine that it was very similar At that point in time yeah with the the tiny little movie theater So Fox didn't have a lot of confidence in the idea of this a throwback to movie serials with a mostly unknown cast There was an eight million dollar budget with Overshot to a million dollars which overshot to a massive 13 million dollars Which frankly you couldn't get one of a bigger star into a movie for that amount of money just to pay him much Let's make the movie. I imagine that Harrison Ford was paid more than 13 million dollars for the latest Oh, I would assume yeah So at one point Lucas gave up a five hundred thousand dollar directors payment in exchange for keeping the merchandising rights And you know oh God which Fox was happy to accept because at the time that was at that point time You know that would never happen now no for any movie I don't think so we'll talk more about that later, but the film did open on Memorial Day weekend 1977 although it didn't go wide until July yeah now I don't remember when exactly I went to go see it first But it apparently was only a handful of theaters until July Well, I'm pretty sure it was fairly early in the summer that I saw it it might even have been that Memorial Day weekend Although I don't know why Brookfield Square would have had it. Yeah, but It wasn't very long after we got out of school that we went because I was pretty much Hibernating for the summer. I never did anything during the summer So so back then of course movies in many cases took months to get to a wide audience It wasn't three thousand four thousand five thousand screens all at once It was like well, we'll make several copies of what our major cities then we'll move to smaller cities move smaller and smaller Especially when the studio didn't have a confidence in the movie. Well, there were a lot less screen I'm not gonna say movie theaters, but screens back then because most movie theaters only had One or two screens maybe four at the most right right, you know So even now, you know, you see the big movies will be playing on four or five screens at the same theater You know, then it was just one screen. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about some of the stats Prior to 1977 Fox's largest annual profits as a movie studio were 38 million dollars In 1977 they made 79 million dollars The original run Memorial Day weekend 1977 until Labor Day weekend 1978 15 months and you would never see a 15-month run in the theaters now It made 307 million dollars at the box office. It holds number seven all-time domestic Number two adjusted for inflation, which based on that puts it at 1.4 billion dollars It was re-released in 78 79 81 82 and then got the special edition Which with all these new effects in 1997, you know where Han didn't shoot first One six Oscars art direction costume design film editing original score sound and visual effects And I have to think that if it was actually Hadn't been in that sci-fi category that still gets a little bit of the shaft It would have done a little better on there, right, but it was nominated for best picture It was nominated for best director and supporting actor for Alec Guinness. Mm-hmm so In 1977 to 78 in that period. I was about 13 14 years old every few weekends I want to see the movie again and again. That was just like what she did like when you're gonna do this Oh, let's go see Star Wars You know you can't do that now because movies don't stay in the theater that long But that movie literally stayed in theaters For a year and a half and you have to wonder, you know, what happened to the other movies that should have been coming out Well every studio was retooling It was like it was like when they went from Real heat when they went from the silence to the talkies. It was like Science fiction everything anything that was in there in their possession that was science fiction related got green lit Immediately there was a ton of science fiction that came out of this But if you went to the stores in the summer of 1977 you wouldn't find a lot of Star Wars stuff to buy Because merchandising prior to Star Wars was an afterthought you'd bring in some though Who's the junior paralegal back in the closet somewhere have him write the contract for the merchandise? Yeah, because it was it was just like this rounding error to to the studios and to the publishing companies And movies rarely got a lot of merchandise because it took so long to work out the details Manufacture the stuff and then get on the shelves and it would be hard to coordinate getting it on the shelf when the movies were actually in the theater And popular and they didn't want to take a chance until the movie was out, right? And so only ongoing franchises like James Bond would get merchandise and TV shows really only got them after they became hits like in their second or third season And even then you might get a board game. You might get a lunchbox You know, especially if you look for for stuff that was that was licensed merchandise in the 60s It would be like a gun like a plastic gun in a plastic bag with the with the Cardboard up to the top to say Hogan's heroes on it. I mean, it was like yeah, whatever. We really don't care. It's just crap We don't care But by 1978 you really couldn't get away from Star Wars merchandise because it really changed the game. Yeah Migo was offered the action figure contract and Migo was the big player then because they were doing the DC figures And these were of course the larger figures that were that were had cloth Yeah, clothes and all this But they balked at the cost so Kenner got it instead and by the way Migo no longer exists And Kenner is now part of Hasbro, and I think the Mattel owns them now I don't know but there was no way to get the toys of the stores by Christmas of 1977 It just couldn't be done because you you had to have them made in Asia and shipped over and it was a big process You can probably do it now, but maybe but then you're talking seven months between the movie coming out Getting the contract and doing it. Well, and you think about just the advances in technology that allow you to make some of these things Yeah, you can prototype like that. Yeah This forced the creation of one of the most brilliant marketing ideas ever something that I assume Marketing majors like have to write papers like this the Star Wars IOU a Desperate parent of a kid who loves Star Wars could buy the Star Wars Early bird certificate package a picture on cardboard of the four Star Wars figures They could receive between February and June 1978 by saying it back to Kenner The number of disappointed kids that found this under the tree in 1977 Christmas Must be massive. It's like what is this a piece of cardboard a picture Now of course there would eventually be over a hundred action figures just in the original run and probably thousands Yeah, all these subsequent runs One of which was recalled was a Boba Fett figure that launched a rocket from its back It became a choking hazard and now it's one of the most surprised collectibles because almost all of them got snapped up lightsabers were another issue because They were they were separate and and they just you kind of put them in their hand and they were choking hazards again So later figures had the saber go up the arm of the figure Like a switchblade And that way you can't can't lose it and you can't choke on it And you can get Star Wars bedsheets and t-shirts and model kits and bubblegum and costumes whatever you want Lucas sold the conic rights to Marvel who published the first issue One month before the premiere Wow And there was a novelization that came out in 1976 a year before the movie I wonder if maybe that's what I read that made me excited about my movie because I did read it You know it's supposedly written by Lucas But actually goes written by Alan Dean Foster and now if you get it it does say Alan Dean Foster now They do as the author and then of course. There's the Star Wars holiday special only aired once on CBS in 1978 It's best known for the Wookie's celebrating life day be Arthur running the Cantina bar an Inappropriate holo film featuring Diane Carroll and the first appearance of Boba Fett before Empire Strikes Back in cartoon form It is in continuity because of that And they lined up most of the actual cast for this mostly live action disaster Lucas disowned it and destroyed the master copies although from what I was reading he got the dailies So it's not like it was like he's like I don't remember anything about that Oh, it just came up. Oh, no, I hate it. It's like well, you knew about it all along That's I must not have yeah, no you can't find it officially, but you can easily find it on YouTube Yeah, you know, they may not be the best copies or anything But you can get the general idea, but really you probably don't want to watch it and the theory is Once Lucas passes away They think that they'll agree to go ahead and put it out officially Well, do you think he's that he sold that along with the other Star Wars thing? Well, so I was reading that apparently CBS owns part of it. This is one of these Okay box owns part of it. Yeah, it's I don't think it's part of the whole thing that Marvel bought the rights to so Well Star Wars holds a Place in my heart at least the first three right movies what there are other other movies And we will be seeing yes the next one probably not till after Christmas, right? And we hope that you guys all go see it, too And in the meantime you can listen to our audio podcast how I got my wife tree comics on iTunes or on our website SF podcast network.com from the pop culture bunker and I'm mark. Thanks for watching and may the fullest be with you