He Made Movie Magic: Harry Potter Poster Legend Drew Struzan Dies at 78

Legendary movie poster artist Drew Struzan, the hand behind Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Harry Potter, died October 13 at 78. The brush that defined the modern blockbuster era has fallen still.

Some artists make the movies you love look the way they feel. Drew Struzan was one of those people. The legendary poster painter behind Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, and Harry Potter died on October 13, 2025. He was 78. The news came from his official Instagram, which, honestly, doubles as a greatest-hits gallery of the last half-century of movie memories.

What he did (and why your brain already knows his work)

• Painted more than 150 movie posters, the kind that made you want to see the film before you knew what it was about.
• Got his start doing album covers for The Beach Boys, Black Sabbath, and Alice Cooper.
• Early film gigs included Empire of the Ants and The Food of the Gods.
• Star Wars changed everything for him — once he worked in that galaxy, his name and the saga were welded together.
• Other heavy hitters: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Back to the Future, Blade Runner, The Goonies, First Blood, and E.T.
• When the industry shifted to digital in the early 2000s, he kept painting by hand and still dropped bangers like Hellboy and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

How a Struzan poster works

Struzan didn’t just make pretty one-sheets; he boiled a movie down to a single, emotionally loaded frame. His toolkit was old-school and meticulous: airbrushed acrylics for that lush, cinematic base, then layers of colored pencil to sharpen faces and textures. He’d pull from live models and photo reference to nail likenesses without losing personality.

Composition-wise, there’s a signature rhythm you can spot across decades: a heroic central portrait, orbiting faces for the supporting cast, and little symbolic flourishes swirling around the edges. He lit those faces like icons, with soft glows and halos, and leaned into a palette of fiery oranges and deep blues that felt dramatic without tipping into kitsch. The result wasn’t just marketing — it was storytelling. You could read who these characters were before they said a word.

Why his posters still hit

Most modern posters are sleek, flat, and forgettable; a lot of them look like they were exported straight from a timeline and, lately, undercut by AI-made mush. Struzan’s stuff is the opposite: tactile, human, luminous. You can feel the brush and the breath in them. That’s why his images stuck to the culture, and why so many of us remember the poster before we remember the plot.

Where to revisit him

The announcement of his passing was posted to his official Instagram, which is also a great place to scroll through the work — from film posters to personal pieces. If you want the deeper dive, there’s a feature documentary, 'Drew: The Man Behind the Poster', that walks through his process and career from the inside.

His death really does close a chapter, but the work’s not going anywhere. As long as people care about movies — and about posters that actually make you feel something — Drew Struzan will be in the room.

Favorite Struzan poster? Drop it in the comments. I’ll go first: there’s no beating that Back to the Future one-sheet for pure time-capsule magic.