A brand new Star Wars movie is only two short years away, and it looks like Luke, Leia and Han have all signed on to join in the fun, despite being another 30 years older than they were last time.
Wired points out that, in a Bloomberg Businessweek article , Star Wars godfather George Lucas pretty much spills the beans that the original trio are going to be swinging blasters with a whole new generation — or at least watching.
Lucas told Businessweek he’d already started talking with Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford when he called Disney CEO Robert Iger to talk about selling NorCal’s Lucasfilm to SoCal’s Disney.
“We had already signed Mark and Carrie and Harrison — or we were pretty much in final stages of negotiation,” Lucas said. He added that he called them to let them know what was going on with the Disney sale before it happened. Lucas started to backtrack, realizing that this probably wasn’t supposed to be public knowledge yet, but it was too little too late.
Of course, why wouldn’t these stars want another run as movie icons for what will likely be hefty paychecks?
Carrie Fisher’s most recent feature was a TV movie, “It’s Christmas, Carol!” for the Hallmark Channel, and her most high profile appearance in recent years was probably when she guest starred on a 2007 episode of “30 Rock.”
Mark Hamill has been almost entirely relegated to cartoon voices in recent years. His most well known voice part was his longtime run as the voice of the Joker in the ’90s Batman cartoon, the Batman: Arkham Asylum video games and various other projects.
Harrison Ford has been the most successful of the crew, but with the fan hatred of his last franchise feature, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” this could be a chance for Ford to win genre redemption in the hearts of geeks everywhere. He’s already got one fan servicey project on the way — an appearance in the new Anchorman movie.
There’s no knowing whether this will get the Star Wars franchise back on track with fanboys, following the underwhelming response to prequels and the lack of enthusiasm for recent re-releases. I’ve got my fingers — and lightsabers — crossed.
