George Lucas Drops Major ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’ Bomb
Will they or won’t they? That’s the big question regarding whether Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher will return as their respective characters for Star Wars: Episode VII. According to George Lucas, that was the plan all along.
There’s a lot of conflicting information flying around about whether the original Star Wars cast will return in some capacity for J.J. Abrams’ upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII. Mark Hamill has said that he’s in talks to reprise his role as Luke Skywalker, and rumor has it that Harrison Ford is interested in coming back, as well.
The most encouraging bit of news came this week when Carrie Fisher (aka Princess Leia) confirmed that she would be returning forEpisode VII, but walked back on those comments less than 24 hours later, with her representatives saying that she was “joking.”
So what’s true? Even though George Lucas doesn’t have direct control over the franchise he created anymore, he does have arguably the greatest inside perspective we’ve got (among those who are talking) and can at least give us something to go on. According to Lucas, finding a way to bring Ford, Hamill and Fisher back for Episode VII was part of the plan all along, and long before he sold to Disney.
Lucas told Bloomberg Business Week:
“We had already signed Mark and Carrie and Harrison — or we were pretty much in final stages of negotiation. So I called them to say, ‘Look, this is what’s going on,'” Lucas said, before backing up. “Maybe I’m not supposed to say that. I think they want to announce that with some big whoop-de-do, but we were negotiating with them. I won’t say whether the negotiations were successful or not.”
So, you know, “search your feelings, you know it to be true” and all that. With at least Hamill talking to Disney about coming back, it seems that at the very least, it was always the plan to bring the original cast back in some capacity.
J.J. Abrams is set to direct Star Wars: Episode VII, which will (hopefully) mark the return of Ford, Hamill and Fisher. Abrams did manage to convince Leonard Nimoy to join his Star Trek reboot in 2009, so who knows? Maybe he has a way of talking to people.
