The Last Kings of Hollywood

Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg—and the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema

By: Paul Fischer

Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett

The untold, intimate story of how three young visionaries—Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg—revolutionized American cinema, creating the most iconic films in history while risking everything, redefining friendship, and shaping Hollywood as we know it.

"Shaun Taylor-Corbett narrates the chronicle expertly..." — Kirkus

In the summer of 1967, as the old Hollywood studio system was dying, an intense, uncompromising young film school graduate named George Lucas walked onto the Warner Bros backlot for his first day working as an assistant to another up-and-coming, largely-unknown filmmaker, a boisterous father of two called Francis Ford Coppola. At the exact same time, across town on the Universal Studios lot, a film-obsessed twenty-year-old from a peripatetic Jewish family, Steven Spielberg, longed to break free from his apprenticeship for the struggling studio and become a film director in his own right.

Within a year, the three men would become friends. Spielberg, prioritizing security, got his seven-year contract directing television. Lucas and Coppola, hungry for independence, left Hollywood for San Francisco to found an alternative studio, American Zoetrope, and make films without answering to corporate capitalism.

Based on extensive research and hundreds of original interviews with the inner circle of these Hollywood icons, The Last Kings of Hollywood tells the thrilling, dramatic inside story of how, over the next fifteen years, the three filmmakers rivalled and supported each other, fell out and reconciled, and struggled to reinvent popular American cinema. Along the way, Coppola directed The Godfather, then the highest-grossing film of all-time, until Spielberg surpassed it with Jaws — whose record Lucas broke with Star Wars, which Spielberg surpassed again with E.T. By the early 1980s, they were the richest, best-known filmmakers in the world, each with an empire of their own. The Last Kings of Hollywood is an unprecedented chronicle of their rise, their dreams and demons, their triumphs and their failures — intimate, extraordinary, and supremely entertaining.

A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books

The stories behind the legends

A nuanced, deeply reported story on arguably the three most important American filmmakers of the last great gasp of American cinema.

When’s the sequel to this book coming out?

Great book. Learned a lot I didn’t know about the three directors, plus Scorsese and DePalma. But it basically ends in the 1980s, hope there will be a second book bringing their lives up to present day.

Great History of The Movies of My Generation.

If you've ever wondered how the legends of Hollywood actually made it, this is a must-listen. The book strips away the 'legend' status to show Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola and Scorsese as kids. With nothing but a passion for film struggled to create the biggest Blockbusters in movie history. The narrator is fantastic—his ability to change voices for quotes makes the history feel like a living conversation. It’s a gritty, honest look at the chaotic birth of the blockbuster era. Five stars, I highly recommended to movie lovers like me.

Excellent book to make sure youve seen the classics

I never realized how much their stories intersected. Great hearing the backstories on classic film.

Engrossing book

So interesting to hear how these directors’ work and lives were so intertwined and woven into the fabric of modern cinema.