By now, everyone and their pet lizard knows that Disney has bought LucasFilm and is fast tracking work on an Episode VII, with an VIII and IX following in a third trilogy for arguably the most famous and profitable franchise of all time.
Disney is aiming for a 2015 release for Episode VII. We know that George Lucas has stepped down, and that Kathleen Kennedy is now the head of the company (and is producing the new trilogy), but Lucas will still be onboard as a consultant (and has written the treatments for the next three films). What will the movies be about? Most have speculated/hoped that it would be Timothy Zahn’s “Thrawn Trilogy,” but this looks to be untrue. According to E! Online, “it’s an original story.” It is entirely likely that this is the case, but it’s pretty impossible for Disney not to make three movies without any of the concepts and characters that have been created in the classic Star Wars fiction realms.
Hollywood Reporter’s sources suggest that Disney is mulling an AVENGERS style take on STAR WARS. What the hell does that mean? It would be “an Avengers-style movie universe with not only Lucas’ planned final trio of films but offshoot movies focusing on individual characters,” so that likely means BOBA FETT shoots to the top of those potential spinoffs.
EW got to chat with Mark Hamill, who has known about the plans for the new trilogy since August, but had no idea about Disney.
“[George Lucas] asked Carrie [Fisher] and I to have lunch with him and we did…I thought he was going to talk about either his retirement or the ‘Star Wars’ TV series that I’ve heard about — which I don’t think we were going to be involved in anyway, because that takes place between the prequels and the ones we were in and, if Luke were in them, he’d be anywhere from a toddler to a teenager so they’d get an age-appropriate actor — or the 3-D releases. So when he said, ‘We decided we’re going to do Episodes VII, VIII, and IX,” I was just gobsmacked. “What? Are you nuts?!“”
“I can see both sides of it…Because in a way, there was a beginning, a middle, and an end and we all lived happily ever after and that’s the way it should be — and it’s great that people have fond memories, if they do have fond memories. But on the other hand, there’s this ravenous desire on the part of the true believers to have more and more and more material. It’s one of those things: people either just don’t care for it or are passionate about it. I guess that defines what cult movies are all about.” Does this mean Fisher or Hamill are involved? I doubt anything more than cameos. They don’t look pretty.
Ain’t It Cool News had been quiet…too quiet about the proceedings, and that ended quite quickly. They posited that Brad Bird and Damon Lindelof have been hard at work on the STAR WARS sequel already, that their mysterious blockbuster 1952 is really Episode VII. Bird and Lindelof were fan favorites to take on the film, so this fit in perfectly, except it’s all bollocks.
Then Dale Pollock, the George Lucas biographer who wrote SKYWALKING: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF GEORGE LUCAS, brought the idea that they may be planning not one trilogy, but TWO, that episodes 7-12 could be in the offing, and that episodes 7-9 sounded like the most exciting. He told The Wrap: “The three most exciting stories were 7, 8 and 9. They had propulsive action, really interesting new worlds, new characters. I remember thinking, ‘I want to see these 3 movies.’” They involved Luke in his 30s and 40s, with obviously a different actor than Mark Hamill in the role. Of course, the biography was written in 1984, and a lot has changed since then (little things called Episode I, II and III), so this is most likely BS as well.
Huffington Post links M. Night Shyamalan to the new movie, which would be a disaster.
While we’re waiting for this news and rumors to suss themselves out, and for some actual facts, or for my head to explode, we do know one thing: Disney is going to bring Darth Vader and company to Disneyland, and be laughing all the way to the bank.
George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy Talk the Future of STAR WARS:
