In his early treatment, Lucas opened the story on the fourth moon of the planet Utapau, the home of a young warrior called Annikin Starkiller.

[4] Prior to production, early artwork commissioned by Lucas from conceptual illustrator Ralph McQuarrie show robots lost on a desert world, scorched by twin suns and mysterious, masked Tusken Raiders riding large horned Banthas.

Filming in Tunisia began on March 22, 1976, and immediately ran into difficulty: the region was experiencing its first heavy rainfall in seven years, which disrupted the setting of an arid desert planet.

The most significant material cut was a series of scenes set in the township of Anchorhead which served to introduce the characters of Luke Skywalker and Biggs Darklighter.

The hostility of the arid desert environment is emphasised by the depiction of sandstorms and the heat of the binary stars, as Luke watches a twin sunset over the sand dunes.

As the film progresses, various leading characters are introduced to the story in scenes set on Tatooine: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo and Chewbacca.

Later Tatooine scenes take place in Mos Eisley, a gritty bustling spaceport on the planet which is a centre of smuggling and organised crime.

One of the most celebrated scenes in the Star Wars saga is in the Mos Eisley cantina, a shady saloon populated by exotic alien species.

[19][20] Composer John Williams wrote music for the alien band in this scene in the style of swing musician Benny Goodman, and arranged with unusual instrumentation to convey an other-worldly sound.

When the prequel trilogy revived the film franchise in 1999, the action returned to Tatooine for Episode I: The Phantom Menace as the setting for the childhood of Luke's father, Anakin Skywalker.

In Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002), an older Anakin returns to Tatooine to search for his mother, Shmi, who has been kidnapped by Tusken Raiders.

When the Galactic Empire subsumed the Old Republic, the new regime established only a token presence on Tatooine, which left Jabba the Hutt's reign unchallenged until his death during the events depicted in Return of the Jedi.

The first settlement to be shown is Anchorhead where many human settlers on Tatooine pursue a difficult agrarian existence on remote "moisture farms" in the desert, collecting water vapor from the atmosphere to grow crops.

Among these moisture farmers is the young hero of the film, Luke Skywalker, who resides with his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru at the Lars Homestead.

In 2015, the US space agency NASA published an article which stated that many of the newly discovered astronomical bodies possessed scientifically confirmed properties that are similar to planets in the fictional Star Wars universe.

[33] In August 2019, rapper Kanye West announced that he was designing prefabricated homes inspired by the settlements on Tatooine seen in A New Hope to serve as low-income housing.