<P> At the Cannes Film Festival following the completion of THX 1138, Lucas was granted a two - film development deal with United Artists; the two films were American Graffiti, and an untitled Flash Gordon-esque space fantasy film . He pushed towards buying the Flash Gordon rights . He said: </P> <P> I wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie, with all the trimmings, but I couldn't obtain the rights to the characters . So I began researching and went right back and found where Alex Raymond (who had done the original Flash Gordon comic strips in newspapers) had got his idea from . I discovered that he'd got his inspiration from the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (author of Tarzan) and especially from his John Carter of Mars series books . I read through that series, then found that what had sparked Burroughs off was a science - fantasy called Gulliver on Mars, written by Edwin Arnold and published in 1905 . That was the first story in this genre that I have been able to trace . Jules Verne had got pretty close, I suppose, but he never had a hero battling against space creatures or having adventures on another planet . A whole new genre developed from that idea . </P> <P> Director Francis Ford Coppola, who accompanied Lucas in trying to buy the Flash Gordon rights, recounted in 1999: "(George) was very depressed because he had just come back and they wouldn't sell him Flash Gordon . And he says,' Well, I'll just invent my own ."' Lucas envisioned his own space opera and called it The Star Wars . After his failed attempt to gain the Flash Gordon rights, Lucas went to United Artists and showed the script for American Graffiti, but they passed on the film, which was then picked up by Universal Pictures . United Artists also passed on Lucas's The Star Wars concept, which he shelved for the time being . After spending the next two years completing American Graffiti, Lucas turned his attention to The Star Wars . </P> <P> Lucas began writing in January 1973, "eight hours a day, five days a week", by taking small notes, inventing odd names and assigning them possible characterizations . Lucas would discard many of these by the time the final script was written, but he included several names and places in the final script or its sequels . He revived others decades later when he wrote his prequel trilogy . He used these initial names and ideas to compile a two - page synopsis titled Journal of the Whills, which told the tale of the training of apprentice CJ Thorpe as a "Jedi - Bendu" space commando by the legendary Mace Windu . Frustrated that his story was too difficult to understand, Lucas then began writing a 13 - page treatment called The Star Wars on April 17, 1973, which had thematic parallels with Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress . </P>

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