Ambimama - India

Oscar winning director Steven Spielberg is still making money from Star Wars, 30 years after he won a bet with his friend and director George Lucas.

Lucas was sure that his first film Star Wars would flop in 1977 and so he had a bet with Spielberg for a percentage of his film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Lucas thought Spielberg’s film would land a bigger success story.

Contactmusic.com reported Spielberg as recalling: “George came back from Star Wars a nervous wreck. He didn’t feel Star Wars came up to the vision he initially had. He felt he had just made this little kids movie.

“He came to Alabama where I was shooting Close Encounters on this humongous set and hung out with me for a couple of days. He said: ‘Oh my God, your movie is going to be so much more successful than Star Wars. This is gonna be the biggest hit of all time.’

“He said, ‘You want to trade some points? I’ll give you two and a half per cent of Star Wars if you give me two and a half per cent of Close Encounters. I said, ‘Sure, I’ll gamble with that, great.’ And I think I came out on top of that bet.

“Close Encounters made so much money and rescued Columbia from bankruptcy. It was the most money I ever made, but it was a meagre success story.

Star Wars was a phenomenon and I was the happy beneficiary of a couple of points from that movie … I am still seeing money on today.
Curtesy - IANS