10 Things You Didn't Know About Hollywood

2. Hollywood Originally Turned Down Raiders

FILE - This Jan.29,2010 file photo shows the Hollywood sign as seen in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles. Thirty-five years after it was rebuilt, the sign's letters will be stripped down to sheet metal, primed and given a new coat of white paint. The 10-
Paramount Pictures

As William Goldman says, “Nobody Knows Anything”, meaning that not a single person in Hollywood has the faintest idea what the Next Big Thing will be.

When George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, two of the most commercially successful directors of all time even in 1980, proposed an old-fashioned action adventure movie in the spirit of the Saturday matinee serials, Universal, Fox and Columbia turned them down. Raiders Of The Lost Ark was eventually made at Paramount, and the rest you know.

Universal and Columbia, in particular, must’ve been kicking themselves. Between them, they’d managed to pass on Star Wars and E.T., each of which made a billion dollars worldwide. 

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Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'