 One of Lucas's new hirees was Brian Johnson, who had worked on "" (1968) and turned down an opportunity to work on the first film.Lucas also had to build his studio, Lucasfilm, which similarly had few employees.Distributor 20th Century Fox had tried to sell "Star Wars" to other studios because it feared it would lose money on the overbudget production, but following the film's success, by September 1977 it was eager to make a deal with Lucas on the sequel.