How The Empire Strikes Back Broke Guild Rules & Led George Lucas To Quit The DGA

George Lucas quit the Director’s Guild of America, Writer’s Guild of America, and Motion Picture Association of America due to The Empire Strikes Back‘s opening crawl. A major part of Star Wars‘ appeal has been the crawl that precedes any action in the saga films, a callback to the Flash Gordon serials of Lucas’ childhood. With A New Hope proving to be such a struggle on production and post-production fronts, both guilds allowed the opening crawl. With the technicality that the director was listed in the Lucasfilm logo, any potential fines were waived, despite the credits taking place at the end of the film.