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George Lucas

Age: 80
Born: May 14, 1944
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Creator of Boba Fett

2023-05-24T21:31:10-07:00

Writer/Director/Producer - Creator of Boba Fett

Creation of Boba Fett

The second draft of The Empire Strikes Back is noted as the first reference to Boba Fett, who began as an all-white Supertrooper and ended up a single bounty hunter. See our page entitled Timeline for how everything fits together including his television debut in the Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978, well before his theatrical debut in "Empire."

Quotes on Boba Fett's Fate

For a chronological order to the following, see our page entitled Is Boba Fett dead or alive?.

Doesn't Quite Fit

Lucas reconsidered going back and glamorizing the death of bounty hunter Boba Fett, a secondary character who became a cult favorite. He considered "having Boba Fett survive and crawl out of the" mouth of the sand creature in Jedi. "But that doesn't quite fit in the end." -- USA Today, 9/2004, interview with Mike Snider

That Extra Shot in where He Climbs Out

"In the case of Boba Fett's death, had I known he was going to turn into such a popular character, I probably would've made it a little bit more exciting. Boba Fett was just another one of the minions, another one of the bounty hunters and bad guys. But, he became such a favorite of everybody's that, for having such a small part, he had a very large presence. And now that his history has been told in the first trilogy, y'know, it makes it even more of a misstep that we wouldn't make more out of the event of his defeat, because most people don't believe he died anyway. I'd contemplated putting in that extra shot in where he climbs out of the hole, but y'know I figure that's . . . it doesn't quite fit, in the end." -- Return of the Jedi DVD Commentary, 33:01, 9/04

Boba Fett is Dead

Asked by MTV in 1997 about why is Boba Fett so popular: "I don't know why. [Laughs]. I'm mystified by it. He's a mysterious character. He's a provocative character. He seems like an all powerful character, except he gets killed. Although he's gotten killed, the people who write the books, and everything, and the comics say 'we can't kill him, we gotta bring him back, we can't let him die!'"

Watch the video

Boba Fett is Alive

In 2012 at Celebration VI was recorded on the fly at an exhibit of Boba Fett fan-made helmets. In that video and our news report, Lucas says aloud that Boba Fett did not die.

Asked About Understanding the Cult [Following] Around Boba Fett

"Yeah. He's cool. The fun of it is, you find those little incidental characters and then if people are really attracted to them, they can take off. It's basically what Marvel does. Let's face it: Boba Fett is sort of the same character as Iron Man. It's just that he doesn't have such an articulate suit. We didn't go into the kind of detail that Iron Man goes into because we didn't have to." (May 2020, Empire Magazine)

Other Key Quotes

Wanting Boba Fett to Star in "Star Wars 1313"

According to an article on GameInformer.com, George Lucas is noted as saying he wanted (Star Wars 1313) to be Boba Fett. Despite having a lot of buzz when it was first announced, the game was shelved indefinitely when Disney bought Lucasfilm and then shut down LucasArts.

Wanting to do a Boba Fett Story

According to an interview with IGN, Dave Filoni responds to a question that included an indirect quote which Filoni did not correct: "[S]o when George came in and said, "OK, I want to do a Boba Fett story," what was your reaction?" You can read the whole response in our article.

Boba Fett in Live-Action TV Series

According to a report by USA Today, when George Lucas received his AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005, he brought up Boba Fett. "Lucas said Logan's character may be included in his live-action Star Wars TV series, which is in the works." (The series has yet to happen now over a decade later.)

Remember to Tell Them

"Already developing the story for Episode II ("remember to tell them that Boba Fett is in it," he says), Lucas at this point tentatively plans to have that film finished by 2002." -- starwars.com

Editing

"When you're editing, you're dealing with the reality of the film. And cinematically, things are very different than the way you originally had them on page. Words and images are two different things because cinema really involves movement and sound and they're a lot of elements that you can't express on paper because you're dealing with two different mediums. It's not the same grammar. For example, on the barge there's a sequence where Boba Fett gets knocked over, and we didn't really have the right shot to make the sequence work, so I reversed one shot of Boba Fett falling down and made it look like he was getting up." -- Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays (p. 257)

Boba vs. Lando

Originally George Lucas envisioned a fight between Boba Fett and Lando but eventually suggested instead that the power pack on Boba's back should be hit and thrown around, as if he had "a balloon on his back that got air out of it." -- Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays (p. 259)

Trivia

On January 1, 2007, George Lucas was the Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade. One Star Wars float featured Endor and had Boba Fett walking alongside, appearing briefly here and there in the live TV broadcast coverage.

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Last updated: May 24, 2023
Article ID: 92