The 'Star Wars' creator lets it slip that he has signed the original Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Luke Skywalker depicters for the upcoming project, admitting that he's 'not supposed to say that.'
- Mar 8, 2013
AceShowbiz - Amidst a lot of chatters about whether or not Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill will return to the franchise in a new project to be directed by J. J. Abrams, creator George Lucas accidentally reveals that those three original "Star Wars" actors have been signed on for upcoming "Star Wars Episode 7". They are expected to reprise their roles as Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Luke Skywalker respectively.
"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,' " he tells Bloomberg Businessweek, before quickly adding, "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."
Ford, who was recently seen filming his next movie "Anchorman: The Legend Continues" with funnyman Will Ferrell, has been widely rumored to be back on the movie franchise, but he has been playing coy when it comes to confirming his involvement. "Harrison is open to the idea of doing the movie and he's upbeat about it, all three of them are," a source close to the actor once told Entertainment Weekly.
Fisher, meanwhile, had previously blatantly said she would join the "Star Wars" crew for the future project, but her representative quickly sent a denial to retract her statement. "She was joking. Nothing has been announced," so her team insisted.
As for Hamill, the actor recently told Entertainment Tonight that he had indeed been approached by Lucas but insisted he hadn't signed any contract. "They're talking to us," he said. "We're in the stage where they want us to go in and meet with Michael Arndt, who is the writer, and Kathleen Kennedy, who is going to run Lucasfilm. Both have had meetings set that were postponed -- on their end, not mine. They're more busy than I am."
"I said to George that I wanted to go back to the way it was, in the sense that ours was much more carefree and lighthearted and humorous - in my opinion, anyway. And another thing I'd want to make sure of is are we going to have the whole gang back? Is Carrie and Harrison and Billy Dee and Tony Daniels, everybody that's around from the original [returning]? I want to make sure that everybody's on board here, rather than just one."
He added, "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."
