In the late 1970s an exhausted, deeply pessimistic George Lucas visited Steven Spielberg's set, became convinced his own 1977 space opera would flop, and traded 2.5 percent of its profits for 2.5 percent of Spielberg's film. This deep dive uses that famous bet as a window into the imposter syndrome and physical collapse behind one of the most successful movies ever made, tracing Lucas from his frustration with bleak early-1970s science fiction to the day he felt forced to abandon an unfinished film.

Along the way we cover the refused Flash Gordon rights, the studio rejections, the 200-page scripts with characters like Mace Windy and a green monster version of Han Solo, the toxic Tunisia and England shoot, the diagnosis of exhaustion and hypertension, and the editing overhaul with Marcia Lucas that injected speed into dead footage. We close  ...