First came the rumour that Harrison Ford had agreed to reprise the role of intergalactic scoundrel-turned-rebel hero Han Solo, then came word from Mark Hamill that he was in talks with Disney about returning as Luke Skywalker, followed by comments yesterday (subsequently put down as a joke by her rep) from Carrie Fisher stating she’d be back as Princess Leia… and now, it’s all official. Well, kind of, with former Star Wars supremo George Lucas “pretty much” confirming that the trio will be back in Disney’s Star Wars: Episode VII.
“We had already signed Mark and Carrie and Harrison—or we were pretty much in final stages of negotiation,” Lucas tells Bloomberg Business Week (via The Playlist). So I called them to say, ‘Look, this is what’s going on.’ ” he said. “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.” But of course, just to drag the entire will they/won’t they? saga out even longer, Lucas then went on to add: “I won’t say whether the negotiations were successful or not.”
Lucas may have handed the keys to the Star Wars universe over to Disney when the studio purchased Lucasfilm last year, but any fans hoping for a Lucas-free sequel trilogy may be disappointed to hear that the bearded one will remain involved in a consulting capacity: “I mostly say, ‘You can’t do this. You can do that. You know, ‘The cars don’t have wheels. They fly with antigravity.’ There’s a million little pieces. Or I can say, ‘He doesn’t have the power to do that, or he has to do this.’ I know all that stuff.”
Star Wars: Episode VII will be directed by J.J. Abrams (Star Trek Into Darkness) from a script by Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3) and is currently slated for release in 2015.