Club Jade directed me to this wonderful bit of news from Mark Hamill about the casting of Episode VII. He did an interview with Entertainment Tonight about the new movies and gave us an update about the talks in a way that is much more concrete and full of details, vague as they are, than we’ve heard before:
“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… 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.”
He’s also hopeful that the whole gang will return:
“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. I guess I’ll have to tune into your show to figure out who’s on board.”
There’s so much more in the interview that you really should go over to the Entertainment Tonight website and read the whole thing. He touches on what he thinks the future films will be about (Skywalker children) and what he hopes for the special effects (a mix of CGI and practical), among other things.
For the other bit of news, there was an interview with Ian McDiarmid in the UK’s Mirror. Not the most reliable, I know, but the quote was innocuous enough I felt it warranted mentioning.
But he reckons a return to Star Wars could be tricky for Palpatine, the Sith Lord Dark Sidious, because he got his comeuppance in the last Star Wars movie.
“He’s disappeared into oblivion,” sighs Ian.
“I don’t know what the plans are for Star Wars. They are talking about a lot of projects.
“The Emperor was the most evil character that ever lived. Now he’s dead – but I suppose anything can happen in Star Wars.”
Back during Star Wars Celebration, McDiarmid was playing awful coy about Palpatine coming back. My speculation at the time was that we’d see him on The Clone Wars, possibly voicing Palpatine to replace the loss of Ian Abercrombie, or on the Live Action show… But we know that everyone there at Celebration knew there would be more movies at that point. Could this bit of the interview in the Mirror redirect where that speculation should be aimed?
Like McDiarmid himself said: It’s Star Wars and anything is possible.