Fans of 'Star Wars' celebrated on Tuesday as the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be constructed in Los Angeles.
According to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles was selected personally by "Star Wars" filmmaker George Lucas and remarked "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."
The museum was originally planned to be built in Chicago. However, Lucas had ran into legal challenges from an open-spaces group and pulled the project. Garcetti had wooed the filmmaker to base the museum in Los Angeles.
Lucas would be funding the museum, which is valued at $1 billion. It would also feature exhibitions from Lucas' collection fo paintings, illustrations and digital art from the "Star Wars" franchise which he started in 1977.
In the statement of the museum's board of directors, they said "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 would be located next to the University of Southern California, where Lucas studied film and met his future collaborators such as Steven Spielberg.
Lucas sold the franchise to Disney in 2012 for $4 billion. So far, Disney has rebooted the series with six new films, including the recently released standalone story "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" which debuted in theaters in December.
