Rick McCallum
Encyclopedia
Richard "Rick" McCallum (born August 23, 1952) is a German-born American film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

 mostly known for his work on the The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is an American television series that aired on ABC from March 4, 1992, to July 24, 1993. The series explores the childhood and youth of the fictional character Indiana Jones and primarily stars Sean Patrick Flanery and Corey Carrier as the title character, with...

as well as the Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...

 Trilogy: Special Edition
and prequel trilogy. His mother, Patricia McCallum, has been married to his stepfather, actor Michael York
Michael York (actor)
Michael York, OBE is an English actor.-Early life:York was born in Fulmer, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the son of Florence Edith May , a musician; and Joseph Gwynne Johnson, a Llandovery born Welsh ex-Royal Artillery British Army officer and executive with Marks and Spencer department stores...

, since 1968.

Early career

McCallum's producing career began with Pennies from Heaven
Pennies from Heaven (1981 film)
Pennies from Heaven is a 1981 musical film. The film was based on a 1978 BBC television drama. In 1981, Dennis Potter adapted his own screenplay for a film of the same name for American audiences, with its setting changed to Depression era Chicago. Potter was nominated for the 1981 Academy Award...

(1981) for director Herbert Ross
Herbert Ross
Herbert Ross was an American film director, producer, choreographer and actor.-Early life and career:Born Herbert David Ross in Brooklyn, New York, he made his stage debut as Third Witch with a touring company of Macbeth in 1942...

 and writer Dennis Potter
Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...

. During the 1980s, he went on to produce movies with renowned filmmakers including David Hare
David Hare (playwright)
Sir David Hare is an English playwright and theatre and film director.-Early life:Hare was born in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, the son of Agnes and Clifford Hare, a sailor. He was educated at Lancing, an independent school in West Sussex, and at Jesus College, Cambridge...

 (Strapless
Strapless
Strapless is a 1989 film written and directed by David Hare.-Plot summary:An expatriate American doctor in London allows herself to lighten up when her freewheeling younger sister and a mysterious man enter her life. Her inhibitions released, the beautiful doctor learns that freedom has its own...

); Neil Simon
Neil Simon
Neil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that...

 (I Ought to Be in Pictures
I Ought to Be in Pictures
I Ought to Be in Pictures is a play by Neil Simon.The three-character comedy-drama focuses on Herbert Tucker, a struggling, writer's-blocked screenwriter who abandoned his New York family 16 years earlier...

); and Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Forbes Fierstein is a U.S. actor and playwright, noted for the early distinction of winning Tony Awards for both writing and originating the lead role in his long-running play Torch Song Trilogy, about a gay drag-performer and his quest for true love and family, as well as writing the...

, whose HBO film On Tidy Endings received four CableACE Awards.

McCallum produced the music video Undercover
Undercover
Being undercover is disguising one's own identity or using an assumed identity for the purposes of gaining the trust of an individual or organization to learn secret information or to gain the trust of targeted individuals in order to gain information or evidence...

for the Rolling Stones, which MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

 named the Best Video of the Decade. McCallum established a close working relationship with English director Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Jack Roeg, CBE, BSC is an English film director and cinematographer.-Life and career:Roeg was born in London, the son of Mabel Gertrude and Jack Nicolas Roeg...

, and acted as producer on Roeg's films Castaway
Castaway (film)
Castaway is a 1986 film starring Amanda Donohoe and Oliver Reed, and directed by Nicolas Roeg. It was adapted from the 1984 book of the same name by Lucy Irvine, telling of her experiences of staying for a year with writer Gerald Kingsland on the isolated island of Tuin, between New Guinea and...

and Track 29
Track 29
Track 29 is a 1988 film directed by Nicolas Roeg. It was produced by George Harrison's HandMade Films with Rick McCallum. The film was nominated for and won a few awards at regional film festivals. The writer, Dennis Potter, adapted his own 1974 television play, Schmoedipus, changing the setting...

.

Collaboration with George Lucas

In 1986, McCallum re-teamed with Potter, serving as executive producer on the landmark BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

-TV series The Singing Detective
The Singing Detective
The Singing Detective is a BBC television miniseries written by Dennis Potter, which stars Michael Gambon, and was directed by Jon Amiel. The six episodes were "Skin", "Heat", "Lovely Days", "Clues", "Pitter Patter" and "Who Done It"....

. They worked together again in 1989 for the BBC production of Blackeyes
Blackeyes
Blackeyes is a multi-layered novel which was later adapted as a TV drama by British playwright Dennis Potter. The TV version was highly controversial at the time....

. Their successful collaboration also produced Dreamchild
Dreamchild
Dreamchild is a 1985 British drama film produced by Verity Lambert, directed by Gavin Millar and written by Dennis Potter. It stars Coral Browne, Ian Holm, Peter Gallagher, Nicola Cowper and Amelia Shankley and is a fictionalized account of Alice Liddell, the child who inspired Lewis Carroll's...

, an unusual exploration by Potter of the creation of Alice in Wonderland, which won three BAFTA awards. It was on the set of Dreamchild that McCallum met Star Wars creator George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...

.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles

Several years after their first meeting, Lucas was preparing his first weekly live-action television program, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and he turned to McCallum to produce the ambitious series, which was to be shot in 35 countries. With a unique perspective on the eventful early life of Indiana Jones
Indiana Jones
Colonel Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., Ph.D. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created the character in homage to the action heroes of 1930s film serials...

 – including its cinematic qualities, an emphasis on storytelling and characters, and an enticing promise of new adventures each week – McCallum attracted a stellar list of writers and actors to the creative ranks of the series. Among the directors with whom McCallum worked on the series were Bille August
Bille August
Bille August is a Danish Academy Award winning film and television director. His film Pelle the Conqueror from 1987 won the Palme D'or, Academy Award and Golden Globe. He is one of the very few directors to win the Palme D'or twice, winning the prestigious award again in 1991 for The Best...

, Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Jack Roeg, CBE, BSC is an English film director and cinematographer.-Life and career:Roeg was born in London, the son of Mabel Gertrude and Jack Nicolas Roeg...

, David Hare
David Hare (playwright)
Sir David Hare is an English playwright and theatre and film director.-Early life:Hare was born in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, the son of Agnes and Clifford Hare, a sailor. He was educated at Lancing, an independent school in West Sussex, and at Jesus College, Cambridge...

, Mike Newell
Mike Newell (director)
Michael Cormac "Mike" Newell is an English director and producer of motion pictures for the screen and for television. After the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2005, Newell became the third most commercially successful British director in recent years, behind Christopher Nolan...

, Deepa Mehta
Deepa Mehta
Deepa Mehta, LLD is a Genie Award-winning Indian-born Canadian film director and screenwriter, most known for her Elements Trilogy, Fire , Earth , and Water , among which Earth was submitted by Indian government for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film...

, Terry Jones
Terry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....

, Simon Wincer
Simon Wincer
Simon Wincer is an Australian film director and film producer. He attended Cranbrook School, Bellevue Hill, Sydney from 1950 to 1961. On leaving school he worked as a stage hand at TV Station Channel 7. By the 1980s he directed over 200 hours of television. In 1986 he directed the made for TV...

, and Carl Shultz. During its run, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences honored Young Indiana Jones with 11 Emmy Awards and 25 nominations. The series debuted on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 in 2007, and McCallum served as executive producer on a series of 94 acclaimed documentaries that accompany the episodes and illuminate the real-life history behind their stories.

Star Wars

When Young Indiana Jones wrapped, McCallum produced Radioland Murders
Radioland Murders
Radioland Murders is a 1994 black comedy mystery film directed by Mel Smith and co-written/produced by George Lucas. Radioland Murders is set in the 1939 atmosphere of old-time radio and pays homage to the screwball comedy films of the 1930s...

(1994), for which Lucas served as executive producer. During its production, Lucas confided to McCallum the plans for three new Star Wars movies. To test the nascent digital technology just then becoming available, McCallum produced revised versions of Star Wars
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...

, The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is a 1980 American epic space opera film directed by Irvin Kershner. The screenplay, based on a story by George Lucas, was written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan...

, and Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi is a 1983 American epic space opera film directed by Richard Marquand and written by George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan. It is the third film released in the Star Wars saga, and the sixth in terms of the series' internal chronology...

.

Assembling the teams that worked both in front of and behind the cameras, McCallum produced the next three films, which Lucas wrote and directed: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is a 1999 American epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas. It is the fourth film to be released in the Star Wars saga, as the first of a three-part prequel to the original Star Wars trilogy, as well as the first film in the saga in terms...

(1999), Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones is a 2002 American epic space opera film directed by George Lucas and written by Lucas and Jonathan Hales. It is the fifth film to be released in the Star Wars saga and the second in terms of the series' internal chronology...

(2002) and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is a 2005 American epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas. It is the sixth and final film released in the Star Wars saga and the third in terms of the series' internal chronology....

(2005).

The Star Wars prequels also ushered in a new era of digital filmmaking, and McCallum played the leading role in its development. He oversaw a team of creative and technical professionals that developed and created the industry's first all-digital production pipeline.

McCallum is currently in post-production on Red Tails
Red Tails
Red Tails is an upcoming 2012 action drama film directed by Anthony Hemingway, from a screenplay by John Ridley and Aaron McGruder. The story, written by Ridley, is inspired by true events. George Lucas serves as the executive producer for the project...

, an action-adventure that pays tribute to the spirit of World War II's Tuskegee Airmen
Tuskegee Airmen
The Tuskegee Airmen is the popular name of a group of African American pilots who fought in World War II. Formally, they were the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps....

 to be released nationally in the U.S. on January 20th, 2012, and on which Lucas will act as executive producer; and on a live-action television series set in the Star Wars galaxy.

External links

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