Earlier this week, film producer Robert Watts died at the age of 86, having left an important impact on some of Hollywood’s greatest movie franchises.
In the mid-1970s, Watts was hired by producer Gary Kurtz to work on director George Lucas’s new movie, Star Wars. Watts worked as the production supervisor on the first film, was an associate producer on The Empire Strikes Back, and a co-producer on Return of the Jedi. According to Lucasfilm, Watts was the chief production scout for the films, exploring locations where the movies could be filmed. Watts also organized production crew members in London and assisted with local casting.
Watts also worked on George Lucas’s other famed franchise, serving as an associate producer on Raiders of the Lost Ark, and a producer on both Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
“It’s not an overstatement to say that, without Robert Watts’ involvement, Lucasfilm would be a very different company today,” Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy said in a statement. “Not only did he bring his own skills to the production of several milestone films, but also gave opportunities to so many other important crew members to do so as well.”
Among them were his half-sibling Jeremy Bulloch (who played Boba Fett in the original trilogy), his next-door neighbor Julian Glover (who played antagonist Walter Donovan in The Last Crusade), and friend Rick McCallum (who produced the Star Wars prequel trilogy). All three of them can trace their involvement in those projects to their relationship with Watts, and there are surely others who could do the same in various positions.
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