Writer/directer George Lucas had some ideas for the Star Wars sequels but Disney is going in a different direction.
[dropcap size=small]W[/dropcap]hen Disney bought Lucasfilms for $4 billion dollars they also bought the rights to the Star Wars franchise. Lucas had ideas and rough drafts of characters ready to go so it would only be too easy for Disney to go with Georges ideas and sit back and watch the money flow like the force is strong with Luke. Disney wanted to make sure they did this right, so they are going with a whole new approach.
“The [treatments] that I sold to Disney, they came up to the decision that they didn’t really want to do those. So they made up their own. So it’s not the one that I originally wrote [for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’],”
Said Lucas during an interview with Vanity Fair. His original ideas were more focused on the younger characters, “teenagers” he says, but Disney was afraid the same problems that faced the prequels will arise again when making the sequels.
Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3) was hired to write a script, but with the deadline rapidly approaching, Arndt was having trouble coming up with a final script. “There was a ton of ideas and outlines, a lot of cards on the wall, a lot of writing on whiteboards,” Abrams said, but in fact, he didn’t even have a draft done. Finally Abrams took over writing a script with Lawrence Kasdan with only six months until it was time to shoot.
The two started writing in November 2013 and by January 2014 they had a draft ready. With time being so short, Abrams and Kasdan were working on story beats on set. Now i know what your thinking, but it’s not that uncommon on the set of a big movie like Star Wars.
Abrams says he has a good feeling out this film,
“…there was a feeling I had not had since the original trilogy that was so familiar to me and still very possible to tap into —the sense of being transported to some other place where anything was possible but that was specific to ‘Star Wars’ in aesthetic, in history, in design, sound design, music. It was a very unique and specific world. I could taste and I could feel it.”
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Star Wars: The Force Awakens, directed by J.J. Abrams and starring Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Gwendoline Christie, and Andy Serkis will be coming to a galaxy near you December 18, 2015.
