Gareth Wigan, a London-born talent agent, film producer and studio executive credited with steering the success of such films as “Star Wars,” died on Saturday in his home at Los Angeles at the age of 78 after a brief illness. Tributes from Hollywood heavyweights from Barbra Streisand to George Lucas and Martin Scorsese poured in for the Oxford graduate, who began his career as an agent in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s and then moved to California in the 1970s where he served in various high-profile Hollywood studio executive positions. Wigan is widely regarded as a pioneer in the growth of global cinema by championing acclaimed filmmakers such as Ang Lee, Stephen Chow, Zhang Yimou and Guy Ritchie. Early in his career Wigan represented directors John Schlesinger and Richard Lester. By the mid-1970s Wigan had moved to California to work at Twentieth Century Fox to serve as a production executive on “Star Wars” and other critically acclaimed films like “All That Jazz,” “The Turning Point” and “Alien.” In 1979, Wigan collaborated with fellow Fox executives Alan Ladd Jr. and Jay Kanter, and the trio developed and produced hit films such as Best Picture Oscar-winner “Chariots of Fire” and Oscar-nominated “The Right Stuff.”
