Sandi Hicks
In ‘tell us something we didn’t know’ news, Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill says he’s officially unofficially in talks to rejoin co-stars Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford (he also mentioned the possibility of Billy Dee Williams – something Moviehole told you might happen a month or so ago, since ‘Lando’ is reportedly in the script) about appearing in Lucasfilm’s upcoming ”Star Wars Episode VII”, directed by JJ Abrams (‘Fringe’, ‘Star Trek’).
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Hamill says, “George [Lucas] wanted to know whether we’d be interested. He did say that if we didn’t want to do it, they wouldn’t cast another actor in our parts – they would write us out. … I can tell you right away that we haven’t signed any contracts.”
Hamill also spoke about what the newest addition to the saga might be about, “I’m assuming, because I haven’t talked to the writers, that these movies would be about our offspring — like my character would be sort of in the Obi-Wan range [as] an influential character. … When I found out [while making the original trilogy] that ultimate good news/bad news joke – the good news is there’s a real attractive, hot girl in the universe; the bad news is she’s your sister – I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to wind up like Sir Alec [Guinness]. I’m going to be a lonely old hermit living out in some kind of desert igloo with a couple of robots.’
Hamill, verifying his intelligence, says he hopes Lucasfilm restrain themselves from using too much CGI this time ’round.
“I hope they find the right balance of CGI with practical effects. I love props, I love models, miniatures, matte paintings — I’m sort of old school. I think if you go too far in the direction of CGI it winds up looking like just a giant a video game, and that’s unfortunate. … If they listen to me at all, it’ll be, ‘Lighten up and go retro with the way it looks.'”
As for the standalone spin-off movies, Hamill thinks they’re a great idea.
“That’s really smart. Then you’re more like James Bond pictures, where they come out and it’s not an investment of a three-movie arc. … It’s so rich, that [Star Wars] universe, in terms of quirkiness and oddball [nature]. We would talk about that [on the original film’s set]. We’d go like, ‘That little band that’s playing in the Cantina, what’s their story?! I mean, are they a traveling band? Are they the house band? Who’s their manager?’ They didn’t have names when we first were talking about them. Now they’re called, like, Sy Snootles – they come up with names down the road when they have to name toys.”
Hamill even has some suggestions for Lucasfilm in terms of future spin-off movies : ” Oh, I don’t know, set it on the Wookiee planet — although that might be prohibitively expensive with that many Wookiees,” he says with some resignation. After a little more thought, he muses, “That’s what I would love. You pick the most insignificant little [character] – there’s this little hawk-beaked character that’s somewhere in Jabba’s palace, I can’t even remember what function he served — but that’s what I would think. You pick something that almost nobody remembers or knows about — and then have a movie about him! You could probably put about 500 different character’s names on a big, giant dart board, throw a dart, and say, ‘Okay, wherever it lands we’ve got to make him the central character.'”
We hope that ‘the force’ isn’t against the return of the original cast but by all indications, what with Abrams being hired to direct, an Oscar Winning screenwriter on writing duties, the writer of “Empire Strikes Back” (Lawrence Kasdsan) on consulting duties, and Producer/Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy seemingly intent on making something more akin to the original films than the prequels, Lucasfilm has the interests of the fans at heart this time around.
