Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free George Lucas trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
George Lucas created Star Wars and Indiana Jones, founded Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic and THX, and helped birth Pixar along the way, yet he has never won a competitive Oscar. This quiz covers the man behind the franchises: the teenage racing crash that changed his plans, film school with the "Dirty Dozen", THX 1138 and American Graffiti, the merchandising deal that made him a billionaire, the friends and collaborators from Coppola to Spielberg to John Williams, the flops like Howard the Duck, the prequels, the sale to Disney and the museum he is building in Los Angeles. Easy questions ask where he was born and which company he sold in 2012; harder ones cover the budget of American Graffiti, the dog that named Indiana Jones and why the Air Force turned him down. It suits Star Wars fans who want to look behind the camera, film-history students, and quiz nights that need a movies round with some depth. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Lucas, his films and his companies, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01George Lucas was born in 1944 in which California city, later the setting of American Graffiti?
Modesto
It is a small agricultural city in the Central Valley, and his father ran a stationery store there.
Q 02What career did the teenage Lucas dream of before a near-fatal crash in June 1962 changed his mind?
Racing driver
His seatbelt snapped and threw him clear as his Autobianchi flipped into a tree; he had bruised lungs but survived.
Q 03Lucas transferred to the film school of which institution, where his classmates were known as "The Dirty Dozen"?
USC
He shared a dorm room with Randal Kleiser and befriended fellow student filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.
Q 04Why was Lucas turned down when he tried to join the US Air Force as an officer after graduating in 1967?
Too many speeding tickets
He was then drafted for Vietnam but exempted when medical tests found he had diabetes.
Q 05On which 1969 concert film did George Lucas work as a camera operator?
Gimme Shelter
The Rolling Stones documentary was one of his early jobs before he moved back to the Bay Area.
Q 06With which filmmaker did Lucas co-found the studio American Zoetrope in San Francisco in 1969?
Francis Ford Coppola
He had first met the older director on a Warner Bros. scholarship, observing the making of Finian's Rainbow.
Q 07Which actor starred in Lucas's 1971 debut THX 1138, a dystopia of mandatory drugs and banned reproduction?
Robert Duvall
Donald Pleasence co-starred, and Walter Murch co-wrote the script; a director's cut with CGI additions followed in 2004.
Q 08American Graffiti is set during one night in which year?
1962
It studies the cruising and early rock and roll culture of Lucas's own teenage years.
Q 09American Graffiti was made for a budget of roughly how much?
$777,000
It earned over $200 million in box office and home video, making it one of the most profitable films ever made.
Q 10American Graffiti overtook which 1970 disaster film as Universal's highest-grossing film ever?
Airport
Universal had planned to release it as a TV movie until a producer fresh from The Godfather attached his name to it.
Q 11Which real disc jockey appears as himself in American Graffiti?
Wolfman Jack
The cast also included Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Cindy Williams and a young Harrison Ford.
Q 12Lucas wrote Star Wars only after failing to obtain the rights to which serial from his childhood?
Flash Gordon
The film also borrowed narrative beats from Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress and the look of spaghetti westerns.
Q 13Which studio executive forced through the Star Wars deal at Fox because he liked American Graffiti?
Alan Ladd Jr.
Lucas later said the executive "invested in him rather than in the film", and the hit restored Fox's finances.
Q 21Indiana Jones was originally named Indiana Smith, after what?
Lucas's Alaskan Malamute dog
Philip Kaufman cut the character's nightclub-womaniser side and suggested the Ark of the Covenant as the goal.
Q 22Where was George Lucas hiding from the Star Wars opening in May 1977 when the Indiana Jones idea was revived?
Hawaii
The two friends discussed the shelved archaeologist project on the beach as the surprise blockbuster took off.
Q 23Who recommended composer John Williams to Lucas for Star Wars?
Steven Spielberg
Lucas has called Williams the "secret sauce" of his movies, and the AFI ranked the score the greatest of all time in 2005.
Q 14Instead of a higher fee than his agreed $150,000, what did Lucas negotiate for on Star Wars?
Licensing, merchandising and sequel rights
Lucasfilm went on to earn hundreds of millions from toys, games and collectibles.
Q 15Which film displaced Star Wars as the highest-grossing film of all time five years later?
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Both were made by the same friend of Lucas, who later lost the crown to Jurassic Park and Titanic.
Q 16Lucas's chest pains during the editing of Star Wars turned out to be what?
Hypertension and exhaustion
The strain of post-production on the trilogy contributed to his divorce from Marcia Lucas at its end.
Q 17Lucas's first wife Marcia won an Academy Award for which craft on Star Wars?
Film editing
She had also been nominated for cutting American Graffiti and for a BAFTA for Taxi Driver.
Q 18Lucas gave up his Empire Strikes Back screenwriting credit out of respect for which late writer?
Leigh Brackett
He kept a story credit on Empire and shared the screenplay credit with Lawrence Kasdan on Return of the Jedi.
Q 19Who directed The Empire Strikes Back at Lucas's commission?
Irvin Kershner
Richard Marquand was hired for Return of the Jedi, and Lucas served as executive producer on both.
Q 20Where did the name of Lucas's effects house ILM come from?
The zoning category of its Van Nuys warehouse
Founded in 1975 after Douglas Trumbull turned Lucas down and suggested his assistant John Dykstra instead.
Q 24Lucas originally wanted Star Wars scored with existing classical recordings, in the manner of which film?
2001: A Space Odyssey
Williams instead proposed recurring leitmotifs in the style of Holst, Walton and Stravinsky, whose works Lucas had used as temp tracks.
Q 25Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of which company's computer division?
Lucasfilm
The Apple co-founder bought it in 1986 and became its majority shareholder.
Q 26How much did the buyer pay Lucas for the Pixar graphics group in 1986, matching it with the same sum in capital?
$5 million
Lucas wanted to stop the cash drain of seven years of research and refocus on making entertainment rather than tools.
Q 27The THX sound system was developed in 1983 to ensure which film's soundtrack was reproduced accurately?
Return of the Jedi
Tomlinson Holman built it at Lucas's company; the famous "Deep Note" glissando trailer came from a colleague.
Q 28Which 1986 film, based on a Marvel comic, is described as the biggest flop of Lucas's career?
Howard the Duck
It won four Golden Raspberry Awards and made about $16 million against a budget of over $30 million.
Q 29Which fantasy film directed by Ron Howard did Lucas executive-produce in 1988?
Willow
The same decade he backed Jim Henson's Labyrinth, Kurosawa's Kagemusha and Don Bluth's The Land Before Time.
Q 30Lucas's secluded ranch workplace near Nicasio is in which California county?
Marin
The property covers over 4,700 acres, of which only 15 are developed.