Development Battle Beyond the Stars came out of producer
Roger Corman's desire to make a
space opera-style film in the wake of the massive worldwide success of
Star Wars. It was budgeted at an estimated $2,000,000. At the time of its release, it was the most expensive film produced by Corman. Much of the budget allegedly went toward paying the salaries of
George Peppard and
Robert Vaughn, since both of screenwriter Sayles' previous films were low-budget productions. Up-and-coming screenwriter
John Sayles had already written the Corman-produced
The Lady in Red and
Piranha, the latter of which was both a financial and critical success. At one point, Australian director
Richard Franklin was attached to direct. However, he was replaced by
Jimmy T. Murakami, a veteran animator who had previously been an uncredited co-director on Corman's
Humanoids from the Deep. The film was co-financed by Orion Pictures who distributed the film in Europe. (Corman had a relationship with those executives when they worked at United Artists and had done a similar thing with them on
Piranha.) The planet Akir and its inhabitants, the Akira, a peaceful alien race at the center of the conflict, were named in honor of director
Akira Kurosawa, whose film
Seven Samurai provided the framework for the plot.
Casting Prior to production, a Hollywood trade paper announced that
John Wayne would star in the film, under the direction of
Ingmar Bergman. In all likelihood, this was a joke, either by the trade paper or the film's publicist.
George Peppard had been the original choice to play Vin in
The Magnificent Seven.
Robert Vaughn played Lee in
The Magnificent Seven, and essentially reprised his role as 'Gelt'.
Julia Duffy made her film debut, playing Shad's sister.
Kathy Griffin appeared as an Akira extra.
Filming To save on costs, the film was produced in Corman's own studio, his "renowned lumberyard facility" in
Venice, California.
Visual effects and art direction Corman initially hired
James Cameron as a model maker for his studio after being impressed with his short film
Xenogenesis. When the original art director for the film was fired, Cameron became responsible for the majority of the film's special effects, or, as Cameron later put it, "production design and art direction". This was Cameron's first "big break" in the entertainment industry, and it helped to propel his career. He was recommended by long-time working partner and future wife
Gale Anne Hurd, who was at the time working for Corman. While Cameron initially worked on camera rigging, he soon started working on special effects and production design of interior sets. The low-budget led to Cameron's designing the spaceship's corridors out of spray-painted
McDonald's containers. Cameron paid great attention to detail, and hardly slept for weeks while working on the film. His hard work paid off, as the special effects were one aspect of the film highly received by both fans and critics, opening the door for his later successes. According to Hurd, actor
Bill Paxton was employed on the set as a carpenter, which is where she first met him, before working with him and Cameron on
Aliens: "So my first memory of Bill was him pounding nails and cracking everybody up. I mean, we'd be working at three or four in the morning and he would be the one who kept all our spirits up. He was that person on and off set".
Sound The
supervising sound editor, also responsible for special sound effects, such as Robert Vaughn's "laser shot" – based on
Clint Eastwood's
.44 Magnum from
Dirty Harry – was
David Yewdall, a regular contract-worker for Corman films. Yewdall later remarked on the "film's frugal sound editorial budget" in his
Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound, and explained some of the movie's sounds: each of the seven spaceships had its own sound. The Nestor ship's sound was made from human voices generated by the community choir from his hometown college in
Coalinga, California; Robert Vaughn's ship was based on the recording of a
dragster. == Music ==