George Lucas conceived Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1973 after a movie poster of a hero leaping from a horse onto a truck reminded him of the 1930s and 1940s adventure serials he loved as a boy. He first imagined a B-movie hero called Indiana Smith, named after his Alaskan Malamute, and the project was shelved while he developed Star Wars. In 1975 he worked on the story with Philip Kaufman, who suggested the Ark of the Covenant as the central prize. In 1978 Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan and Steven Spielberg spent days refining the story, and Spielberg rejected the surname Smith because it recalled a Steve McQueen western character, so they chose Jones. The character drew on Clint Eastwood, Toshiro Mifune and James Bond. Studios balked at Lucas's terms and the budget, and Paramount accepted only after Michael Eisner agreed to a deal that gave Lucas sequel rights.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.