Rick Mccallum

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Rick McCallum’s career spans decades of collaboration, production leadership, and a long partnership with George Lucas that shaped some of the most ambitious projects in modern filmmaking. His work across the prequel trilogy and various Lucasfilm ventures reflects a producer deeply committed to pushing technical boundaries while supporting large‑scale creative vision.

This feature highlights McCallum’s role in guiding teams, navigating evolving production landscapes, and championing new technologies that defined Lucasfilm’s transition into the digital era. It offers a grounded look at the personality, drive, and collaborative energy behind his contributions to Star Wars.

Rick Mccallum

Rick McCallum began his career as a producer working with one of Britain’s most esteemed screenwriters, the late Dennis Potter, on the screen adaptation of Pennies From Heaven, starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters. McCallum and Potter then reunited on the acclaimed six-part BBC series The Singing Detective.

McCallum has also established a close working relationship with director Nicholas Roeg and produced two of Roeg’s films, Track 29 and Castaway. Other film credits include Dennis Potter’s Blackeyes, Neil Simon’s I Ought To Be In Pictures, Heading Home starring Gary Oldman with a screenplay by playwright David Hare who also directed the film, and Strapless also written and directed by Hare, with Blair Brown and Bridget Fonda. Another of McCallum’s pictures, Dreamchild, written by Mr. Potter, won three BAFTA awards and an Evening Standard Award for Best Actress (Coral Browne).
For television, McCallum has produced the HBO film On Tidy Endings, written by Harvey Fierstein and starring Fierstein and Stockard Channing. The production received four cable ACE Awards, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay. He has also produced the Rolling Stones’ music video Undercover, which won the MTV Award for Best Video of the decade.

Since 1990, McCallum has worked only with writer/director George Lucas. The two have collaborated on the feature film Radioland Murders, and the critically acclaimed TV series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. This series, filmed over a period of four years in 27 countries, received 26 Emmy nominations and won 11 Emmy Awards. It also won the 1993 Banff Award for Best Continuing Series and received a 1993 Golden Globe nomination for Best Dramatic Series. Directors included: Bille August, Mike Newell, Nic Roeg, Carl Schultz, Simon Wincer, David Hare, Deepa Mehta, Rene Manzor, Gavin Millar, and Terry Jones.

McCallum produced the restoration and enhancement work done on the phenomenally successful Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition, in addition to producing the next Star Wars trilogy, the first installment of which appeared in theaters on May 19, 1999.

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An Interview with the Rickster:

Q. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, Rick. Can you tell us anything more about casting on the new movie?

A. We have a wonderful ensemble lined up. Casting this movie, when the audience is already familiar with some of the characters from the original Star Wars movies, is an enormous, involved process. Robin Gurland, our Director of Casting, has been hard at work on Episode I for the past two and a half years. The hard work and long searches are really paying off — we’re extremely happy with the ensemble we’ve gathered, and we think the fans will be, too.

We’re close to being able to announce Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, and Jake Lloyd as the leads. We’re also talking to Pernilla August, for the role of Anakin’s mother, Ian McDiarmid, who played the Emperor in the original Star Wars series, Adrian Dunbar, Terence Stamp, and Oliver Ford Davies.

Q. What about Charlton Heston? We heard some talk that he might play the voice of Yoda in Episode I.

A. No, no, absolutely not — Yoda wouldn’t hear of it. He was insistent that he work with Frank Oz again if we wanted him back. He told us, “Frank Oz! Or I will help you not!”

Q. When and where will you be shooting the movie?

A. We are currently doing preproduction on Episode I and we’ll start shooting later this summer at Leavesden Studios outside of London. We’re in the process of building around 50 sets.

Outside of the sets, most of the environments will be created digitally. You have to understand that many of the scenes we’re building just couldn’t be done without the use of digital rendering. You can’t just go and do a location shoot of Coruscant, there’s nothing like it that people have ever seen. Many of our “locations” will exist only in digital form.