Many very interesting stories about it including one where many theaters refused to book the film.
There is also a very well known story that the heads of 20th Century Fox were so convinced that the movie will fail, when Lucas ask them to be given 100% of the $ return on merchandising, they agreed.
It's been said 20th Century Fox sold the merchandising rights back to George Lucas for before The Empire Strikes Back was released because Lucas owned the sequel and Fox owned the distribution rights.
Quote
Fox initially owned the merchandising rights and was able to make quite a few dollars on the initial Kenner figures, books, and apparel. However, in a bad move to make a quick buck, they gave the farm away to Lucas who was then able to sell that “farm” to Disney for $4 billion many years later.
Since George Lucas financed The Empire Strikes Back, he was looking to Fox to distribute the movie. Since Lucas owned the movie, he could have any studio distribute the movie. The problem is that Lucas wanted the merchandising rights back. So in order to distribute Empire and retain video rights for 7 years, Fox gave George Lucas back the merchandising rights away just to distribute Empire. It was a shortsighted decision to give up merchandising rights just to distribute the next Star Wars movie. Maybe Fox didn’t think there was a future for merchandising, but Lucas was making more films.
The merchandises for Star Wars has made more money than all the Star Wars movies earned in ticket sales (not including Episode 7,8,9, Solo and Rogue One, those are not owned by Lucas).
$28 billion before Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012.
![[Linked Image]](https://thumbs2.imgbox.com/26/4a/3HAdw7St_t.jpg)
