A Look at Star Wars - the Empire Strikes Back: The Illustrated Screenplay

It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.

Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Hoth.

The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space… - Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, The Empire Strikes Back: The Illustrated Screenplay

Even though George Lucas had conceived Star Wars (which would, after 1981, be officially re-issued as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) as one chapter in a trilogy, in 1977 he only had a vague outline for the next film in the series. He had, after all, written a story treatment that contained the building blocks for not just one movie but all three. However, the struggle to make the first movie and his own low expectations for its success prevented Lucas from sitting down and writing the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back on his own.

But Star Wars broke all the existing box-office records, becoming the first film to earn over $200,000,000 in ticket sales and becoming a cultural phenomenon, prompting 20th Century Fox and millions of fans alike to ask, “When is the next Star Wars movie coming out? And what’s it going to be about?”

As early as November of 1977, Lucas was working on a story treatment for what he then called Star Wars Episode II, which he planned to hand over to Leigh Brackett, a renowned science fiction novelist. As he later told film documentary maker Laurent Bouzerau: