Drew Struzan, legendary movie poster artist, dead at 78

Per a statement from his family, legendary movie poster artist Drew Struzan passed away on Sunday, October 13, following a years-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 78 years old. Active from the 1970s to the 2010s, Struzan was best-known for painting the key art for various Steven Spielberg and George Lucas projects, including the Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Back to the Future films.

Other iconic posters included those for several Muppets films, The Thing, First Blood, Big Trouble in Little China, Adventures in Babysitting, Coming to America, Hocus Pocus, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Struzan’s self-portrait on the poster for Drew: The Man Behind the Poster (2013)

Struzan was born in Oregon City on March 18, 1947, and trained in Los Angeles at the ArtCenter College of Design. He originally worked as a music album cover artist, designing Alice Cooper‘s 1975 release Welcome to My Nightmare, among others. He made his movie poster debut that same year, and first produced a poster for Lucas (with Charles White III) with the “circus” art for the 1978 rerelease of Star Wars. His association with Lucasfilm extended to him designing the first logo for Industrial Light & Magic, and art for book covers, video games, and theme park rides.

His work extended into coins, board games, stamps, and comic books, including the covers for Dark Horse‘s 2000 Darth Maul series, and 2003’s Action Comics #800, where he painted himself into an homage to the Man of Steel’s first appearance.

Struzan officially retired in 2008, following the release of the fourth Indiana Jones movie, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (which he created a limited edition poster for), but would return intermittently, producing posters for Cowboys & Aliens, The Force Awakens, the original How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, and the documentaries Batkid Begins and Floyd Norman: An Animated Life.

The cover for Action Comics #800, featuring Struzan himself bottom left

Struzan also frequently collaborated with director Frank Darabont, creating art for rereleases of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, as well as the first season of The Walking Dead. Original artwork based on Stephen King‘s The Dark Tower was featured in Darabont’s film adaptation of The Mist, and was subsequently sold as a poster for the books themselves. Struzan also illustrated a non-fiction book by his wife, Dylan Struzan, A Bloody Business: The Rise of Organized Crime in America, published by Hard Case Crime in 2019.

Struzan was honored during his lifetime with several awards, including a Saturn and an Inkpot Award, and an induction into the Society of Illustrators‘ Hall of Fame.

He is survived by Dylan, whom he had been married to since 1965; their son Christian; and grandchildren.

Spielberg responded to the news saying, “Drew made event art. His posters made many of our movies into destinations… and the memory of those movies and the age we were when we saw them always comes flashing back just by glancing at his iconic photorealistic imagery. In his own invented style, nobody drew like Drew.”

Struzan’s cover for George Lucas: The Creative Impuse (1991)

Lucas stated, “His illustrations fully captured the excitement, tone and spirit of each of my films his artwork represented. His creativity, through a single illustrated image, opened up a world full of life in vivid color… even at a glance. I was lucky to have worked with him time and time again.” Kathleen Kennedy commented, “His artwork is so imaginative, so beautiful, it elevated the movie-going experience for those films before audiences even stepped foot into a theater. Drew’s work is timeless, and will undoubtedly inspire both artists and film lovers for generations to come.”

For more tributes, including ones from Guillermo del Toro (whom Struzan worked with on both of the Hellboy movies he directed), Jim Lee, and J. Scott Campbell, head to The Hollywood Reporter.

You can revisit Struzan’s artwork on his official website, at IMP Awards, and on League of Comic Geeks. His work was also chronicled in several books, including 2010’s The Art of Drew Struzan, and in the 2013 documentary film Drew: The Man Behind the Poster. Additionally, you can check out a poster Kyle Lambert created for a special evening honoring Struzan’s career in 2018 at the Stranger Things artist’s website.