Hey Yo, Draven here.
The STAR WARS: EPISODE VII news and speculation is going to keep coming. Right after our first official casting confirmation, Harry reported what he has been hearing the title might be, and now Entertainment Weekly’s latest issue (via Jedi News) has a six-page spread on EPISODE VII.
The most interesting bit of news in it is that Han Solo is going to reportedly be the co-lead of the film with three of the younger characters. We had been hearing rumblings that (at least in EPISODE VII) Ford’s role was going to be larger than any of the other returning characters and this seems to line up with that.
Now assuming that is true, I am going to connect the dots a little bit here, so take it all with a grain of salt and know that I am not actually reporting this as news, I am just speculating. With that in mind, there was some speculation that the big overhaul Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan made with Michael Arndt’s original script was that they made EPISODE VII a big sendoff for some of the original trilogy characters.
In that new EW report mentioned above, they also state that the deals for the return of Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford were finalized before the sale to Disney was completed. That was when Arndt’s script was the one that was going to be used, and in it Hamill, Fisher and Ford had more supporting roles than lead roles.
So, if Abrams overhauled the script and made at least Han Solo a lead role, then Ford’s original deal was likely changed to reflect that. There had been some unconfirmed rumors that securing Ford a new deal was one of the main reasons it took a while for casting to begin.
Meanwhile, there were separate rumors that Ford had been really pushing Disney to make a new Indiana Jones film (his only blockbuster hit in the last decade+ as a lead actor was INDY IV). We then got word in December, that Disney had worked out a deal with Paramount and could now officially release new INDIANA JONES films, while Paramount still held the rights to the original four films.
Back to today’s EW report, the rest of the casting for EPISODE VII reportedly then began officially in January. So my guess is that not only is Han Solo going to lead the next STAR WARS film, it will probably be the only film Solo will have a big role in with the next trilogy and Ford will instead be reprising his role as Indiana Jones while EPISODE(s) VIII and IX are being filmed and released.
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