Just in time for Star Wars Celebration, a new podcast is being released by the team of documentarians behind the award-winning Score: A Film Music Documentary that will tell the story of the iconic collaborative path between directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.
Blockbuster is a six-part series (a true story in scripted, biopic audio form) releasing Tuesday on Apple, Spotify and other podcast platforms.
“We’ve created a time capsule to go back to the most exciting period of reinvention in Hollywood history and highlight the friendship that inspired it,” said filmmaker and series creator Matt Schrader.
Blockbuster is about the friendship and rivalry between a young Spielberg and Lucas, between 1973 and ’77, when they both failed spectacularly in their careers before achieving monumental successes with Jaws and Star Wars and before their work together on Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schrader explained.
“Blockbuster shows the more intimate moments with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, who kind of emerged fully formed onto the national scene in the 1970s,” said Ray Chase, who voices George Lucas. “Their struggles as young people are really relatable to artists. It wasn’t a done deal; there were a lot of setbacks that came into it. Every single episode of this series it seems like the whole thing is going to fall apart.”
The team behind Blockbuster previously made the music doc Score (2016) and then the follow-up, Score: The Podcast.
“This is a true story, reconstructed from hundreds of sources and archival materials, and more than six months of research,” said producer Kenny Holmes, who also voices Sylvester Stallone in the series.
Blockbuster will also highlight the directors’ experience with up-and-coming composer John Williams after the sudden death of his wife, and his transformation that followed. The podcast will feature new music by award-winning composers Ryan Taubert and Benjamin Botkin, which weaves in original themes and stylings of Williams’ earlier work, according to Schrader.
“It’s a powerful story of following and fighting for dreams,” Schrader said. “What struck me most: It taps all the same high points and devastating lows of a great mythological adventure. And based entirely on thousands of articles, books, documents and more, it’s 100 percent true. Every detail references facts never before reconstructed to tell a narrative story of inspiration, failure and redemption.”
Listen to a preview of Blockbuster, below.
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