this with Give Your Heart to the Hawks, a story about mountain man Jedediah Smith in the 1820s based a novel by Winfred Blevins "It's my interpretation of Jedediah Smith, which might not be exactly historical", said Milius. "It'll be about exploration, about the need to see what's over the next ridge and what that does, what price you pay, to find out. Like Dirty Harry, Smith is a classic lone man, with a searing loneliness about him. A leader of men is always alone." It was never made; neither was Man-Eaters of Kumoan (1976) based on book by Jim Corbett about a tiger hunter in India which Milius worked on. He did come close to making Extreme Prejudice, based on his script, in 1976. However he decided to make Big Wednesday instead; Extreme Prejudice would be made a decade later, much rewritten, and directed by Walter Hill. Big Wednesday and the A Team In 1975, Milius formed his own production company, The A Team, with Buzz Feitshans, who had edited Dillinger. They had a five-year deal with Warner Bros.. Milius said, "Our motto is Civitas Sine Prudentia, which really translates to Social Irresponsibility; I believe in it. It's refreshing, it's liberating. Americans are basically socially irresponsible ... Who else would have invented the atomic bomb quite the same way? The Nazis would have invented it with the desire to conquer the world; we were the only people that could have invented it with the desire not to conquer the world" Its first production was an autobiographical surfing picture, Big Wednesday (1978), which he called "a surfing How Green Was My Valley". This was a major commercial disappointment although it has gone on to be a cult film. Milius's friendship with George Lucas saw him given a percentage of the profits for Star Wars, which Mike Medavoy estimated earned Milius $1.5 million—in exchange Milius gave Lucas a percentage of the profits for Big Wednesday which amounted to virtually nothing. In 1979, Milius said "the ultimate aim of the A Team is that it will become a company that makes lots of projects. I shall be the figurehead and the father figure and take a percentage and I won't have to do anything except go off and direct my movie once every three years." The A Team made a number of movies not directed by Milius. Notably, they produced the first