‘Stars Wars’ Creator George Lucas Inspires Sci-Fi Filmmaker To Do It His Own Way With 'The Next Race'

Writer/Director Stewart St. John’s debut sci-fi feature film The Next Race has been selected to screen at the 2007 Hollywood DV/HD Festival in Hollywood, and the first-time filmmaker says George Lucas was his inspiration in making the film.

“It wasn’t necessarily Star Wars that inspired me,” says St. John, “it was Lucas’ business model and entrepreneurial spirit that was the driving force. I’ve been a fan of his for many years, admiring his work and philosophies and the way he does things on his own terms.”

St. John, who wrote, directed, produced, edited and scored his film, had the chance to make a bigger budgeted version of The Next Race many years ago, but when his agents at the time told him someone else would be directing, he declined to sell his script.

“I did that in the past with other scripts I’ve written,” explains St. John, who wrote and produced the Showtime Original film Seventeen Again, “but this one was a passion project and I really wanted to bring the vision inside my head to the screen.”

Realizing it was next to impossible to raise the $20 million dollars he needed for the budget, the writer/director sat down and wrote a non-linear prequel story that he could shoot on a shoe-string.

“I raised my own money, pulled in every favor I had, found a warehouse in Valencia, and hired an incredibly creative team who helped me pull it together,” St. John says. “It was extremely important that everything in the film be original, nothing borrowed from existing movies or sets. Mr. Lucas would’ve done the same thing.”

St. John recently returned from a successful trip to the New York Comic Con, where he was invited to premiere the two-minute trailer after the Battlestar Galactica panel. “We had people clapping after they saw the trailer,” he says, “and that was so rewarding because I personally edited every frame of that thing and I was almost in tears. It was really a cool experience. And Kevin Smith was there!”

“The Next Race is not your typical sci-fi film,” St. John explains. “It’s more of a drama, because the budget prevented me from doing all my big action scenes, and so my approach was to make a sci-fi film with an indie feel.”

St. John hopes The Next Race finds a distributor who is excited by the film and will see his vision for the bigger budgeted trilogy that he’s planned. “It’s all part of something called ‘The Creation Wars’, and The Next Race is the first chapter of a much bigger story.”

The film will have its world premiere at the 2007 Hollywood DV/HD Festival as part of Block 1 on March 31 at twelve noon.

Mr. Lucas, are you busy?

You can visit the web site and see the trailer at: http://www.thenextrace.com
Stewart can be contacted at: info@stewdiomedia.com