Star Wars 

 

Star Wars is an American epic space opera franchise centered on a film series created by George Lucas. The film series, consisting of two trilogies (and an upcoming third), has spawned an extensive media franchise called the Expanded Universe including books, television series, computer and video games, and comic books. These supplements to the franchise resulted in significant development of the series' fictional universe, keeping the franchise active in the 16-year interim between the two film trilogies. The franchise depicts a galaxy described as "far, far away" in the distant past, and commonly portrays Jedi as a representation of good, in conflict with the Sith, their evil counterpart. Their weapon of choice, the lightsaber, is commonly recognized in popular culture. The franchise's storylines contain many themes, with strong influences from philosophy and religion.
The first film in the series was released under the title Star Wars on May 25, 1977, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon followed by two sequels, released at three-year intervals. Sixteen years after the release of the trilogy's final film, the first in a new prequel trilogy of films was released. The three prequel films were also released at three-year intervals, with the final film of the trilogy released on May 19, 2005. In 2012, The Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion and announced that it would produce three new films, with the first film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, planned for release in 2015. 20th Century Fox still retains the distribution rights to the first two Star Wars trilogies, owning permanent rights for the original film Episode IV: A New Hope, while holding the rights to Episodes I–III, V and VI until May 2020. Reactions to the original trilogy were positive, with the last film being considered the weakest, while the prequel trilogy received a more mixed reaction, with most of the praise being for the final film, according to most review aggregator websites. All six of the main films in the series were nominated for or won Academy Awards. All of the main films have been box office successes, with the overall box office revenue generated by the Star Wars films (including the theatrical Star Wars: The Clone Wars) totalling $4.38 billion, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film series. The success has also led to multiple re-releases in theaters for the series.

Theatrical films

The film series began with Star Wars, released on May 25, 1977. This was followed by two sequels: The Empire Strikes Back, released on May 21, 1980, and Return of the Jedi, released on May 25, 1983. The opening crawl of the sequels disclosed that they were numbered as "Episode V" and "Episode VI" respectively, though the films were generally advertised solely under their subtitles. Though the first film in the series was simply titled Star Wars, with its 1981 re-release it had the subtitle Episode IV: A New Hope added to remain consistent with its sequel, and to establish it as the middle chapter of a continuing saga.
In 1997, to correspond with the 20th anniversary of A New Hope, Lucas released a "Special Edition" of the Star Wars trilogy to theaters. The re-release featured alterations to the three films, primarily motivated by the improvement of CGI and other special effects technologies, which allowed visuals that were not possible to achieve at the time of the original filmmaking. Lucas continued to make changes to the films for subsequent releases, such as the first ever DVD release of the original trilogy on September 21, 2004 and the first ever Blu-ray release of all six films on September 16, 2011. Reception of the Special Edition was mixed, prompting petitions and fan edits to produce restored copies of the original trilogy.
More than two decades after the release of the original film, the series continued with a prequel trilogy; consisting of Episode I: The Phantom Menace, released on May 19, 1999; Episode II: Attack of the Clones, released on May 16, 2002; and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, released on May 19, 2005. On August 15, 2008, Star Wars: The Clone Wars was released theatrically as a lead-in to the weekly animated TV series of the same name. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is scheduled for release on December 18, 2015. In 2013, it was announced the original Star Wars film will be the first Hollywood film to be dubbed into Navajo.

Film	Release date	Director(s)	Screenwriter(s)	Producer(s)	Status
Original trilogy
Star Wars	May 25, 1977	George Lucas	George Lucas	Gary Kurtz	Released
The Empire Strikes Back	May 21, 1980	Irvin Kershner	Leigh Brackett & Lawrence Kasdan
Return of the Jedi	May 25, 1983	Richard Marquand	George Lucas & Lawrence Kasdan	Howard Kazanjian
Prequel trilogy
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace	May 19, 1999	George Lucas	George Lucas	Rick McCallum	Released
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones	May 16, 2002		George Lucas & Jonathan Hales
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith	May 19, 2005		George Lucas
Animated special
Star Wars: The Clone Wars	August 15, 2008	Dave Filoni	Henry Gilroy, Steven Melching & Scott Murphy	George Lucas & Catherine Winder	Released
Sequel trilogy
Star Wars: The Force Awakens	December 18, 2015	J. J. Abrams	Lawrence Kasdan & J. J. Abrams	Kathleen Kennedy, J. J. Abrams & Bryan Burk	Post-production
Star Wars Episode VIII	2017	Rian Johnson	Rian Johnson	Kathleen Kennedy	Pre-production
Star Wars Episode IX	2019	TBA	TBA