1974 to 1994 – that’s the time it took for Radioland Murders to gestate from its initial announcement by Universal Pictures in ’74 to hitting the big screen twenty years later. Helmed by the late, great and much-missed Mel Smith, the film took audiences back to the madcap, kinetic days of the radio era of the 1930’s, a time that had a huge influence on George Lucas also seen in his Indiana Jones films. As the nascent technology of the mid 90’s began to take hold across the industry, Lucas and his team (who would soon go on to begin work on the Prequel trilogy) would make the movie for $10 million – that’s less than A New Hope 17 years before, and a third of the average cost of a motion picture at that time. Lucasfilm historian Lucas Seastom delves into the details.
By the time Radioland Murders reached movie theaters, executive producer George Lucas had spent 20 years working to get it made. In the wake of American Graffiti’s release in 1973 (another story that dealt with Lucas’ fascination with radio), Lucas was busy developing multiple stories for his upstart company, Lucasfilm. Among these was a space fantasy adventure that would become Star Wars: A New Hope (1977); a globetrotting adventure story about an archaeologist that became Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981); still another was a Vietnam war story, which George Lucas eventually gave to his friend Francis Ford Coppola as Apocalypse Now (1979).
Radioland Murders was the last film in this early batch of projects. In 1974, Universal, who’d distributed American Graffiti, included Radioland in a catalog of its upcoming features. A photograph showed a family huddled around a vintage radio with the tagline, “Who knows what evil lurks…” (borrowed from the iconic, 1930s detective radio program, The Shadow).
At the same time that he was developing the screenplay for Star Wars, Lucas was also working on a script for Radioland with friends Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck. The married couple had co-written Graffiti with Lucas, and would eventually assist with the Star Wars script before writing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and helming Lucasfilm’s Howard the Duck (1986). Huyck and Katz had delivered a first draft screenplay for Radioland by 1976, but by then, plans had changed.
Other projects took precedence for Lucasfilm, beginning with Star Wars: A New Hope. As time allowed, George Lucas continued to attempt to get Radioland off the ground. In the late 1970s, it was reported that comedian Steve Martin was being considered for Roger and Graffiti actress Cindy Williams (then popular as the co-star of TV’s Laverne and Shirley) was in the running for Penny. A dance number earmarked for the film even helped inspire the memorable opening of Temple of Doom, when Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) leads a Busby Berkeley-esque musical rendition of “Anything Goes.”
- Blu-Ray - Radioland Murders [Edition: Stati Uniti] (1 BLU-RAY)
- PHYSICAL FILM
- UNIVERSAL
- Brian Benben, Mary Stuart Masterson, Ned Beatty (Actors)
- Vic Armstrong (Director) - George Lucas (Producer)
