George Walton Lucas Jr. is an American filmmaker and philanthropist. He created the Star Wars franchise and its fictional universe, the Indiana Jones franchise, and founded Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as chairman of Lucasfilm before selling it to the Walt Disney Company in 2012. Nominated for four Academy Awards, he is considered to be one of the most significant figures of the 20th-century New Hollywood movement, and a pioneer of the modern blockbuster. Despite this, he has remained an independent filmmaker for most of his career.
After graduating from the University of Southern California in 1967, Lucas moved to San Francisco and co-founded American Zoetrope with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.