George Lucas' $1 billion 'Star Wars' museum finds Los Angeles home

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Tuesday that the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be located in Exposition Park in downtown Los Angeles.

"I believed in the vision for the Lucas Museum, and we went after it with everything we have —because I know that L.A. is the ideal place for making sure that it touches the widest possible audience," Garcetti said in a statement, thanking Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson.

The museum was initially planned for Chicago, but Lucas ran into legal challenges from an open-spaces group and pulled the project. Garcetti immediately moved to woo the filmmaker to house the museum in Los Angeles.

An artist rendering shows Lucas Museum of Narrative Art to be built in Exposition Park in downtown Los Angeles in this image released in California, U.S., January 10, 2017. Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Photo: REUTERS

An artist rendering shows Lucas Museum of Narrative Art to be built in Exposition Park in downtown Los Angeles in this image released in California, U.S., January 10, 2017. Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art/Handout viaREUTERS

The proposed museum, valued at $1 billion and funded by Lucas, would feature exhibitions of Lucas' collection of paintings, illustrations and digital art from the blockbuster "Star Wars" movie franchise he started in 1977.

An artist rendering shows Lucas Museum of Narrative Art to be built in Exposition Park in downtown Los Angeles in this image released in California, U.S., January 10, 2017. Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Photo: REUTERS

"South Los Angeles's Promise Zone best positions the museum to have the greatest impact on the broader community, fulfilling our goal of inspiring, engaging and educating a broad and diverse visitorship," the museum's board of directors said in a statement.

The proposed site for the museum is next to the University of Southern California, where Lucas studied film and met future collaborators including Steven Spielberg.

Lucas sold his "Star Wars" franchise to Walt Disney Co. in 2012 for $4 billion.

Disney rebooted the franchise with six new films, including a new trilogy in the space saga commencing with 2015's "The Force Awakens," and standalone stories such as December's "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story."

(Reuters)