I've wanted to post this link for a while, and it's kinda on-topic, considering that perhaps Alan Ladd Jr. 'gave' Lucas the money based on American Graffiti. Not sure how slanted the figures are because maybe more people saw AG after Star Wars was released. I know that my older brother took me to see AG at the drive-in on its first release, and that we drove 100 miles to get there, and then 100 miles after it finished. He was into cars in a big way, so AG was being praised in cars magazines that he was reading. We wouldn't have cared what the story was, the main attraction was the beautiful shots of all those fine cars. But I'm getting way off topic here.

Anyway, the numbers in this article are interesting, even if they haven't been updated for a while.

Returns on investment

Did GL select John Williams, Gil Taylor, Ralph McQuarrie, etc as the people he wanted to work with, or were those selected by Kurtz?