Lucasfilm

Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC is an American film and television production company founded by filmmaker George Lucas in 1971 in San Rafael, California, though most of the company's operations were moved to San Francisco in 2005. It has been a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios since 2012 and is best known for creating and producing the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, as well as its leadership in developing special effects, sound, and computer animation for films. The company's films Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) are all among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, with The Force Awakens becoming the highest-grossing film in the United States and Canada. On October 30, 2012, Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in the form of cash and stock with $1.855 billion in stock. History Independent era (1971–2012) Lucasfilm was founded by filmmaker George Lucas in 1971 in San Rafael, California, and was incorporated as Lucasfilm Ltd. on September 12, 1977. In the mid-1970s, the company's offices were located on the Universal Studios Lot. Lucas founded the Star Wars Corporation, Inc. as a subsidiary to control various legal and financial aspects of Star Wars (1977), including copyright, and sequel and merchandising rights. It also produced the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special for 20th Century Fox Television. That year, Lucas hired Los Angeles-based real-estate specialist Charles Weber to manage the company, telling him that he could keep the job as long as he made money. Lucas wanted the focus of the company to be making independent films, but the company gradually became enlarged from five employees to almost 100, increasing in middle management and running up costs. In 1980, after Weber asked Lucas for fifty million dollars to invest in other companies and suggested that they sell Skywalker Ranch to do so, Lucas fired Weber and had to let half of the Los Angeles staff go. By the same year, the corporate subsidiary had been discontinued and its business was absorbed into the various divisions of Lucasfilm.