Jonathan Hales

• 1. Introduction

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  Jonathan Hales was born on the 10th of May 1937, and the production memo that best captures his career came from a producer named Rick McCallum. "At that stage, Attack of the Clones felt like a 'virtual film' because we got the script only three days before we started shooting," McCallum recalled. "We had to build these sets to a script that didn't exist." That situation, where costume designers were cutting fabric and carpenters were raising walls for scenes not yet written, was the result of Hales working alongside George Lucas right up to the edge of principal photography. It is a strange way to introduce a writer. But it is an honest one. Hales spent decades in theatre, film, and television, moving between acting, directing, and screenwriting. He adapted Agatha Christie, contributed a story to a blockbuster action franchise, and co-wrote one of the most anticipated sequels in cinema history. The questions his career raises are not about fame, since he rarely sought it. They are about craft: how a British playwright becomes central to a Hollywood galaxy far, far away, and what it means to write a script that a production is already building around you.

• 2. A Life in Theatre

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  Before the cameras of Hollywood turned in his direction, Hales was a working figure in British theatre, taking on roles as both actor and stage director. In 1977, he directed the play Mecca, written by E. A. Whitehead, at the Open Space Theatre in London. That production placed him behind the director's chair for live performance in the same decade he was already writing for television. The double life, performer and writer, stage and screen, shaped a sensibility that moved comfortably across formats. His early television work, which began in 1970 with the British series Manhunt, reflected that theatrical instinct for character and dialogue. He contributed multiple episodes to Manhunt in its first year, working with directors including Bill Bain, Rex Firkin, and Robert Tronson. He also appeared on screen himself, taking an acting credit alongside his writing credit on at least one production.

• 3. British Television, American Soap

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  The range of Hales's television writing is striking when laid out in sequence. Through the 1970s and into the 1980s, he contributed to series including The Guardians, Villains, Armchair Theatre, and Partners in Crime, the last of which drew on Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence stories. His 1973 Armchair Theatre episode, Brussels Sprouts-Boy Scouts, was co-written with Simon Raven, suggesting a collaborative working method that would define his later career. By 1988 he was writing for Dallas, the long-running American prime-time soap opera, with an episode called The Call of the Wild directed by Michael Preece. That crossing of the Atlantic, from kitchen-sink British drama to glossy Texas oil wealth, illustrated how far his range extended. The Christie connection deepened in 1980 when he wrote the screenplay for The Mirror Crack'd, directed by Guy Hamilton, a film that gathered a notable cast around the Miss Marple story.

• 4. The Young Indiana Jones Years

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  George Lucas first drew Hales into his orbit through The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, the television series that explored the formative adventures of Indiana Jones as a boy and young man. Hales wrote for multiple iterations of the project across the 1990s, covering what Lucas eventually released as The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones across various series and DVD formats. Episodes Hales contributed to include Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Jackal in 1992, directed by Jim O'Brien and Carl Schultz, and Young Indiana Jones and the Scandal of 1920 in 1993, directed by Syd Macartney. He also worked on segments set in Morocco in November 1917 and Princeton in 1919, among other historical locations and periods that the series used as backdrops. These were story-driven productions that required a writer who could move across historical settings with fluency, which Hales demonstrated across several years of work on the project.

• 5. Attack of the Clones

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  The Scorpion King, released in 2002, credits Hales with the story, a prequel to The Mummy franchise directed by Chuck Russell. That same year brought a far larger project: Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, directed by George Lucas, for which Hales shares the screenplay credit. The story credit for that film belongs to Lucas alone. The working conditions on Attack of the Clones were extraordinary even by the standards of large studio productions. Lucas and Hales continued revising the script as sets were being constructed and costumes were taking shape around them. The production draft was completed less than a week before principal photography began. Rick McCallum's recollection captures what that timeline felt like on the ground: designers and builders were committing to physical choices for scenes whose dialogue and structure were still being determined. Hales was present on set during those early stages, working alongside Lucas as the film took physical shape around a script that was still being written.