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Premiere and initial release
Charles Lippincott was hired by Lucasfilm as marketing director for Star Wars. As 20th Century Fox gave little support for marketing beyond licensing T-shirts and posters, Lippincott was forced to look elsewhere. He secured deals with Marvel Comics for a comic book adaptation, and with Del Rey Books for a novelization. A fan of science fiction, he used his contacts to promote the film at the San Diego Comic-Con and elsewhere within fandom. Worried that Star Wars would be beaten out by other summer films, such as Smokey and the Bandit, 20th Century Fox moved the release date to the Wednesday before Memorial Day: May 25, 1977. However, fewer than 40 theaters ordered the film to be shown. In response, 20th Century Fox demanded that theaters order Star Wars if they wanted an eagerly anticipated film based on the best-selling novel, The Other Side of Midnight.

Star Wars debuted on Wednesday, May 25, 1977, in fewer than 32 theaters, and eight more on Thursday and Friday. Kurtz said in 2002, "That would be laughable today." It immediately broke box office records, effectively becoming one of the first blockbuster films, and Fox accelerated plans to broaden its release. Fearing that Star Wars would fail, Lucas had made plans to be in Hawaii with his wife Marcia. Having forgotten that the film would open that day, he spent most of Wednesday in a sound studio in Los Angeles. When Lucas went out for lunch with Marcia, they encountered a long line of people along the sidewalks leading to Mann's Chinese Theatre (then known as TLC Chinese Theatre), waiting to see Star Wars. He was still skeptical of the film's success despite Ladd and the studio's enthusiastic reports. While in Hawaii, it was not until he watched Walter Cronkite discuss the gigantic crowds for Star Wars on the CBS Evening News that Lucas realized he had become very wealthy (Francis Ford Coppola, who needed money to finish Apocalypse Now, sent a telegram to Lucas's hotel asking for funding). Even technical crew members, such as model makers, were asked for autographs, and cast members became instant household names; when Ford visited a record store to buy an album, enthusiastic fans tore half his shirt off.

The film was a huge success for the studio, and was credited for reinvigorating it. Within three weeks of its release, 20th Century Fox's stock price had doubled to a record high. This was due in no small part to the grosses from Star Wars: prior to 1977, 20th Century Fox's greatest annual profits were $37,000,000, while in 1977, the company easily broke that record by posting a profit of $79,000,000. Although the film's cultural neutrality helped it to gain international success, Fox executive Alan Ladd, Jr. became anxious during the premiere in Japan. After the screening, the audience was silent, leading him to fear that the film would be unsuccessful. Ladd was later told by his local contacts that, in Japan, silence was the greatest honor to a film, and the subsequent strong box office returns confirmed its popularity.

When Star Wars made an unprecedented second opening at Mann's Chinese Theatre on August 3, 1977, after William Friedkin's Sorcerer failed, thousands of people attended a ceremony in which C-3PO, R2-D2 and Darth Vader placed their footprints in the theater's forecourt. At that same time Star Wars was playing in 1,096 theaters in the United States. Remarkably, approximately 60 theaters played the film continuously for over a year; in 1978, Lucasfilm distributed "Birthday Cake" posters to those theaters for special events on May 25, the one-year anniversary of the film's release.

Lucas himself was not able to predict how successful Star Wars would be. After visiting the set of the Steven Spielberg–directed Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Lucas was sure Close Encounters would outperform the yet-to-be-released Star Wars at the box office. Spielberg disagreed, and felt Lucas's Star Wars would be the bigger hit. Lucas proposed they trade 2.5% of the profit on each other's films; Spielberg took the trade, and still receives 2.5% of the profits from Star Wars.

Later releases
The film was originally released as Star Wars, without "Episode IV" or the subtitle A New Hope. The subtitles were added starting with the film's theatrical re-release on April 10, 1981. In early interviews, it was suggested the series might comprise nine or twelve films. Star Wars was re-released theatrically in 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, and, with additional scenes and enhanced special effects, in 1997.

After ILM used computer-generated effects for Steven Spielberg's 1993 film Jurassic Park, Lucas concluded that digital technology had caught up to his original vision for Star Wars. For the film's 20th anniversary in 1997, Star Wars was digitally remastered and re-released to movie theaters, along with The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, under the campaign title Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition. The version contained visual shots and scenes that were unachievable in the original release due to financial, technological, and time constraints; one such scene involved a meeting between Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt. The process of creating the new visual effects for Star Wars was featured in the Academy Award-nominated IMAX documentary film, Special Effects: Anything Can Happen, directed by Star Wars sound designer, Ben Burtt. Although most changes were minor or cosmetic in nature, some fans believe that Lucas degraded the film with the additions. For instance, a particularly controversial change, in which a bounty hunter named Greedo shoots first when confronting Han Solo, has inspired T-shirts brandishing the phrase "Han Shot First".

Although the Special Edition's changes were artistic, Star Wars required extensive restoration before Lucas could even attempt his modifications. It was discovered that in addition to the negative motion picture stocks commonly used on feature films, Lucas had also used internegative film, a reversal stock which deteriorated faster than negative stocks did. This meant that the entire printing negative had to be disassembled, and the CRI (color reversal internegative) portions cleaned separately from the negative portions. Once the cleaning was complete, the film was scanned into the computer for restoration. In many cases, entire scenes had to be reconstructed from their individual elements. Fortunately, digital compositing technology allowed them to correct for problems such as alignment of mattes, "blue-spill", and so forth.

Home video
Star Wars debuted on Betamax, LaserDisc, Video 2000, and VHS between the 1980s and 1990s by CBS/Fox Video, and has since been released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats. The film was released for the first time on DVD on September 21, 2004, in a box set with The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and a bonus disc of supplementary material. The films were digitally restored and remastered, and more changes were made by George Lucas. The DVD features a commentary track from Lucas, Ben Burtt, Dennis Muren, and Carrie Fisher. The bonus disc contains the documentary Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy, three featurettes, teasers, theatrical trailers, TV spots, still galleries, an exclusive preview of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, a playable Xbox demo of the LucasArts game Star Wars: Battlefront, and a "Making Of" documentary on the Episode III video game. The set was reissued in December 2005 as part of a three-disc limited edition boxed set without the bonus disc.

The trilogy was re-released on separate two-disc limited edition DVD sets from September 12 to December 31, 2006, and again in a limited edition tin box set on November 4, 2008; the original versions of the films were added as bonus material. Controversy surrounded the release because the unaltered versions were from the 1993 non-anamorphic LaserDisc masters, and were not re-transferred using modern video standards. The transfer led to problems with colors and digital image jarring.

All six Star Wars films were released on Blu-ray Disc on September 16, 2011 in three different editions, with A New Hope available in both a box set of the original trilogy and with the other five films on Star Wars: The Complete Saga, which includes nine discs and over 40 hours of special features. The original theatrical versions of the films were not included in the box set; the new 2011 revisions of the trilogy were however leaked a month prior to release, and caused mass controversy over new changes made to these movies and an online uproar against Lucas.

20th Century Fox owned full rights to the original film until they sold it to Lucas in 1998 in exchange for a lower distribution fee for the prequels and broadcast rights to Episode I. In late 2012, The Walt Disney Company announced a deal to acquire Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion, with approximately half in cash and half in shares of Disney stock. Although Disney will now own the rights to all Star Wars films, under a previous deal with Lucasfilm, the distribution rights to the first film will remain with Fox in perpetuity, while the distribution arrangements for the remaining films are set to expire in 2020. This could affect future video box set releases unless Disney and Fox come to an arrangement.

Box office
Star Wars remains one of the most financially successful films of all time. The film earned $1,554,475 through its opening weekend ($ in today's terms), building up to $7 million weekends as it entered wide release ($ in today's terms). It replaced Jaws as the highest-earning film in North America just six months into release, eventually earning over $220 million during its initial theatrical run ($ in today's terms). Star Wars entered international release towards the end of the year, and in 1978 added the worldwide record to its domestic one, earning $410 million in total. Reissues in 1978, 1979, 1981, and 1982 brought its cumulative gross in Canada and the U.S. to $323 million, and extended its global earnings to $530 million. The film remained the highest-grossing film of all time until E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial broke that record in 1983.

Following the release of the Special Edition in 1997, Star Wars briefly reclaimed the North American record before losing it again the following year to Titanic. In total, the film has earned $775,398,007 worldwide (including $460,998,007 in North America alone). Adjusted for inflation, it has earned over $2.5 billion worldwide at 2011 prices, making it the most successful franchise film of all time. According to Guinness World Records, the film ranks as the third-highest-grossing film when adjusting for inflation; at the North American box office, it ranks second behind Gone with the Wind on the inflation-adjusted list.

Critical response
Upon its release, contemporary critical opinion was positive. In his 1977 review, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film "... an out-of-body experience ...", compared its special effects to those of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and opined that the true strength of the film was its "... pure narrative". Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "... the movie that's going to entertain a lot of contemporary folk who have a soft spot for the virtually ritualized manners of comic-book adventure ..." and "... the most elaborate, most expensive, most beautiful movie serial ever made." A.D. Murphy of Variety described the film as "magnificent" and claimed George Lucas had succeeded in his attempt to create the "... biggest possible adventure fantasy ..." based on the serials and older action epics from his childhood. Writing for The Washington Post, Gary Arnold gave the film a positive review, writing the film "... is a new classic in a rousing movie tradition: a space swashbuckler." The film was not without its detractors. Pauline Kael of The New Yorker criticized Star Wars, stating that "... there's no breather in the picture, no lyricism ...", and that it had no "... emotional grip".

British press for the film was positive. Derek Malcolm of The Guardian concluded that the film "... plays enough games to satisfy the most sophisticated." The Daily Telegraph's Adrian Berry said that Star Wars "... is the best such film since 2001[: A Space Odyssey] and in certain respects it is one of the most exciting ever made." He described the plot as "... unpretentious and pleasantly devoid of any 'message.'" In his review for BBC, Matt Ford awarded the film five out of five stars and wrote, "Star Wars isn't the best film ever made, but it is universally loved."

The film continues to receive critical acclaim from modern critics. The film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes sampled 70 reviews and judged 93% of them to be positive. Its consensus states in summary, "A legendary expansive and ambitious start to the sci-fi saga, George Lucas opens our eyes to the possibilities of blockbuster film-making and things have never been the same." Metacritic reports an aggregate score of 91 out of 100 (based on 13 reviews), indicating "... universal acclaim". In his 1997 review of the film's 20th anniversary release, Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune gave the film four out of four stars, saying, "A grandiose and violent epic with a simple and whimsical heart." A San Francisco Chronicle staff member described the film as "... a thrilling experience." Gene Siskel, writing for the Chicago Tribune in 1999, said, "What places it a sizable cut about the routine is its spectacular visual effects, the best since Stanley Kubrick's 2001." Andrew Collins of Empire magazine awarded the film five out of five and said, "Star Wars' timeless appeal lies in its easily identified, universal archetypes — goodies to root for, baddies to boo, a princess to be rescued and so on — and if it is most obviously dated to the 70s by the special effects, so be it." In his 2009 review, Robert Hatch of The Nation called the film "... an outrageously successful, what will be called a 'classic,' compilation of nonsense, largely derived but thoroughly reconditioned. I doubt that anyone will ever match it, though the imitations must already be on the drawing boards." On a less positive note, Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader stated, "None of these characters has any depth, and they're all treated like the fanciful props and settings." Peter Keough of the Boston Phoenix said, "Star Wars is a junkyard of cinematic gimcracks not unlike the Jawas' heap of purloined, discarded, barely functioning droids."

Awards
The film garnered numerous accolades after its release. Star Wars won six competitive Academy Awards at the 50th Academy Awards: Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound and Best Visual Effects. A Special Achievement for Sound Effects Editing went to sound designer Ben Burtt. Additional nominations included Alec Guinness for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, George Lucas for Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture, which were instead awarded to Woody Allen's Annie Hall.

At the 35th Golden Globe Awards, the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Alec Guinness), and it won the award for Best Score. It received six British Academy Film Awards nominations: Best Film, Best Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Production/Art Design, Best Sound, and Best Score; the film won in the latter two categories. John Williams' soundtrack album won the Grammy Award for Best Album of Original Score for a Motion Picture or Television Program, and the film attained the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

The film also received twelve nominations at the Saturn Awards, the oldest film-specialized awards to reward science fiction, fantasy, and horror achievements, and won nine: Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction and Best Writing for George Lucas, Best Supporting Actor for Alec Guinness, Best Music for John Williams, Best Costume for John Mollo, Best Make-up for Rick Baker and Stuart Freeborn, Best Special Effects for John Dykstra and John Stears, and Outstanding Editing for Paul Hirsch, Marcia Lucas and Richard Chew.

Legacy
The original Star Wars trilogy have become one of the best film trilogies in history. Lucas has often stated that the entire trilogy was, in essence, intended as one film. However, he said that his story material for Star Wars was too long for a single film, so he opted to split the story into multiple films. Lucas also told that the story evolved over time and that "There was never a script completed that had the entire story as it exists now [1983] ... As the stories unfolded, I would take certain ideas and save them ... I kept taking out all the good parts, and I just kept telling myself I would make other movies someday." In early interviews, it was suggested the series might comprise nine or 12 films. Star Wars launched the careers of Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher. Ford, who subsequently starred in the Indiana Jones series (1981–2008), Blade Runner (1982), and Witness (1985) after working on the film, told that Star Wars "boosted my career", and said, "I think the great luck of my career is that I've made these family movies which are introduced to succeeding generations of kids by their families at the time it seems appropriate." Being part of the series "was like ... incredibly lucky" for him.

The film has spawned a series of films, consists of two trilogies, and an extensive media franchise called the Expanded Universe including books, television series, computer and video games, and comic books. In 1978, at the height of the film's popularity, Smith-Hemion Productions approached Lucas with the idea of a television special called Star Wars Holiday Special. It debuted on CBS on November 17, 1978, and the result is often considered a failure; Lucas himself disowned it. All of the main films have been box office successes, with the overall box office revenue generated by the Star Wars films (including the theatrical Star Wars: The Clone Wars) totaling $4.38 billion, making it the fifth highest-grossing film series.

In popular culture
Star Wars and its ensuing film installments have been explicitly referenced and satirized on many instances across a wide range of media. Hardware Wars, released in 1978, was the first film to parody Star Wars. It received positive critical reaction, and is Lucas's favorite Star Wars spoof ever. Writing for The New York Times, Frank DeCaro said, "Star Wars littered pop culture of the late 1970s with a galaxy of space junk." He cited Quark (a short-lived 1977 sitcom that parodies the science fiction genre) and Donny & Marie (a 1970s variety show that produced a 10-minute musical adaptation of Star Wars guest starring Anthony Daniels and Peter Mayhew) as "television's two most infamous examples". Current comedy television shows such as Family Guy, Robot Chicken, and The Simpsons have debuted episodes satirizing the film series. Star Wars, together with Lucas, was also the subject of a 2010 documentary film The People vs. George Lucas that details the issues of filmmaking and fanaticism pertaining to the film franchise and its creator. Many elements of the film have also endured presence in popular culture. The iconic weapon of choice of the Jedi, the lightsaber, was voted in the survey of approximately 2,000 film fans as the most popular weapon in film history. The expressions "Evil empire" and "May the Force be with you" have become part of the popular lexicon. To commemorate the film's 30th anniversary in May 2007, the United States Postal Service issued a set of 15 stamps depicting the characters of the franchise. Approximately 400 mailboxes across the country were also designed to look like R2-D2.

Cinematic influence
Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, "Like The Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane, Star Wars was a technical watershed that influenced many of the movies that came after." It began a new generation of special effects and high-energy motion pictures. The film was one of the first films to link genres — such as space opera and soap opera — together to invent a new, high-concept genre for filmmakers to build upon. Finally, along with Steven Spielberg's Jaws, it shifted the film industry's focus away from personal filmmaking of the 1970s and towards fast-paced big-budget blockbusters for younger audiences.

After seeing Star Wars, director James Cameron quit his job as a truck driver to enter the film industry. Other filmmakers who have said to have been influenced by Star Wars include Dean Devlin, Gareth Edwards, Roland Emmerich, John Lasseter, David Fincher, Peter Jackson, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott, John Singleton, and Kevin Smith. Cameron, Jackson, and Scott were influenced by Lucas's concept of the "used future" (where vehicles and culture are obviously dated) and extended the concept for their films, such as Cameron's Titanic, and Scott's science fiction horror film Alien and science fiction noir film Blade Runner. Jackson used the concept for his production of The Lord of the Rings trilogy to add a sense of realism and believability. Christopher Nolan cited Star Wars as an influence when making the 2010 blockbuster film, Inception.

Some critics have blamed Star Wars, as well as Jaws, for ruining Hollywood by shifting its focus from "sophisticated" films such as The Godfather, Taxi Driver, and Annie Hall to films about spectacle and juvenile fantasy. One such critic was Peter Biskind, who complained, "When all was said and done, Lucas and Spielberg returned the 1970s audience, grown sophisticated on a diet of European and New Hollywood films, to the simplicities of the pre-1960s Golden Age of movies... They marched backward through the looking-glass." In an opposing view, Tom Shone wrote that through Star Wars and Jaws, Lucas and Spielberg "... didn't betray cinema at all: they plugged it back into the grid, returning the medium to its roots as a carnival sideshow, a magic act, one big special effect ...", which was "... a kind of rebirth".

Honors
In its May 30, 1977 issue, the film's year of release, Time magazine named Star Wars the "Movie of the Year". The publication claimed it was a "... big early supporter ..." of the vision which would become Star Wars. In an article intended for the cover of the issue, Time's Gerald Clarke wrote that Star Wars is "... a grand and glorious film that may well be the smash hit of 1977, and certainly is the best movie of the year so far. The result is a remarkable confection: a subliminal history of the movies, wrapped in a riveting tale of suspense and adventure, ornamented with some of the most ingenious special effects ever contrived for film." Each of the subsequent films of the Star Wars saga have graced the magazine's cover.

In 1989, the Library of Congress selected Star Wars for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2002, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back were voted as the greatest films ever made in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Films poll. In 2006, Lucas's original screenplay was selected by the Writers Guild of America as the 68th greatest of all time. In 2011, ABC aired a primetime special, Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time, that counted down the best films as chosen by fans, based on results of a poll conducted by ABC and People magazine. Star Wars was selected as the No. 1 Best Sci-Fi Film. In 2012, the film was included in Sight & Sound's Critics' Top 250 Films list, ranking at No. 171 on the list. In 2008, Empire magazine ranked Star Wars at No. 22 on its list of the "500 Greatest Movies of All Time".

In addition to the film's multiple awards and nominations, Star Wars has also been recognized by the American Film Institute on several of its lists. The film ranks first on 100 Years of Film Scores, second on Top 10 Sci-Fi Films, 15th on 100 Years...100 Movies (ranked 13th on the updated 10th anniversary edition), 27th on 100 Years...100 Thrills, and 39th on 100 Years...100 Cheers. In addition, the quote "May the Force be with you" was ranked eighth on 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes, and Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi were ranked 14th and 30th respectively on 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains.