Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind's Eye -- The Original Sequel That Might Have Been

While it seems impossible to imagine now, there was a time when Star Wars wasn’t one of the biggest franchises in entertainment. The ballooning budget, complex special effects, and fears that it was nothing more than a silly kid's film caused 20th Century Fox to worry that the original film, directed by a New Hollywood maverick named George Lucas, would flop. Instead, the studio put most of its energy behind The Other Side of Midnight, even going as far as to demand that all theaters that wanted it also had to order Star Wars in an attempt to lessen any potential losses. But hindsight is a fascinating thing, and it’s funny to reflect on 20th Century Fox putting all its eggs in the wrong basket. Star Wars opened on May 25, 1977, in just 32 cinemas. The movie immediately broke box office records and, after a quick expansion into a wide release, became the highest-grossing film of all time. Work promptly began on a sequel, with Lucas crafting a story of considerably more scope than the original. The result was the 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, widely considered the best film in the series and the entry that solidified Star Wars as a pop-culture phenomenon with no equal. And the rest, as they say, is history.