George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American filmmaker, creator of the film sagas of "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones," and former president of Lucasfilm Limited, LucasArts Entertainment Company, Lucas Digital Ltd, Lucas Licensing, LucasBooks and Lucas Learning Ltd. He was considered, for two consecutive years, the fourth most powerful person in the entertainment industry, behind the owners of Time Warner, Turner and Steven Spielberg.

Upon graduating from the University of Southern California in 1967, Lucas co-founded American Zoetrope with his fellow filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. Around the time of his graduation, when he was 23, Lucas was also drafted for the Vietnam War. However, during his physical, the doctors discovered that he had Type 2 diabetes and told him that he couldn't go. Lucas wrote and directed "THX 1138" (1971), based on his student short Electronic Labyrinth "THX 1138 4EB," which was a critical success, but a financial failure. His next job as a screenwriter-director was the movie "American Graffiti" (1973), inspired by his adolescence in the 1960s in Modesto, California, and produced through the newly created Lucasfilm. The film was a critical and commercial success, and received five nominations to the Academy Award, including Best Picture.

The next film by Lucas, an epic space opera entitled "Star Wars" (1977), went through a problematic production process; however, it turned out to be the highest grossing film at that time, as well as winning six Academy Awards and becoming a cultural phenomenon. Together with Steven Spielberg, Lucas co-created and helped collaborate with the stories of the "Indiana Jones" movies. Lucas also produced and wrote a variety of films through Lucasfilm in the 1980s and 1990s. Lucas also re-directed the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy in the 2000s. Later he collaborated as executive producer of the war movie "Red Tails" (2012) and wrote the CGI movie "Strange Magic" (2015).

Lucas is one of the most financially successful filmmakers in the American film industry and has been personally nominated for four Academy Awards. Some of his films are among the 100 highest-grossing films in the box office of North America, adjusted for the inflation of ticket prices.

George Lucas, along with Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper and Brian De Palma, is considered one of the most important and influential filmmakers of the New Hollywood era, a period that is considered one of the most important phases of cinema from the artistic point of view. He sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, making co-chair Kathleen Kennedy president. He has attended the premieres of new Star Wars films and been generally supportive of them.

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