Screenwriters, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) · story by George Lucas
The film’s screenplay is credited to Leigh Brackett (1915–1978), the science-fiction novelist and Howard Hawks veteran nicknamed “the Queen of Space Opera,” and Lawrence Kasdan (b. 1949), who went on to write Raiders of the Lost Ark and direct The Big Chill. The credit is shared, but not evenly: Brackett delivered a first draft shortly before her death in March 1978 and, per Wikipedia, was credited “in tribute despite not being involved in the final film.” Lucas, dissatisfied, wrote the next draft himself — the one that established the major plot twists — and Kasdan was then hired to polish the dialogue. This line therefore traces to Lucas’s draft and Kasdan’s dialogue work, not to Brackett’s; it is an authorship no single name honestly covers.