The upcoming new Star Wars trilogy coming from Disney has found an Oscar-winning writer to pen the script, and has already sent in a treatment for the three. For details, take the jump.
Deadline has confirmed that Micael Arndt, writer of Toy Story 3, Little Miss Sunshine, and the upcoming Hunger Games: Catching Fire, is going to be the man behind the next three Star Wars films. Apparently he had been brought on by Lucasfilms months ago to work on this exact project and as such has had some time to percolate into the “lengthy treatment” Disney CEO Bob Iger was speaking of. This is great news for the franchise as it reveals a less super-rushed intent than originally put forth.
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The whole thing about whether or not there would be another trilogy has been rather dodgy. Back in 1979, when Empire debuted, the theater had great handwritten banners draped all over the lobby, reputed to have been written by Lucas himself, breaking the Star Wars franchise into an outline form of twelve movies. I wish I could have gotten a picture of it, but in those days, before digital cameras, and cell phones, you couldn’t sneak a camera inside. Since that time, George Lucas would either claim he was working on more movies or hadn’t a single idea towards expanding the franchise, or had worked out a rough outline of future movies, depending on phases of the moon, the mood he was in or some other arcane formula that never made sense to ordinary mortals. Even the week before the Disney announcement, I found an interview on line with GL where he claimed he hadn’t any ideas for further Star Wars movies. I don’t know if George Lucas was outright lying, or was going senile, or was just playing silly buggers with the public, but I began to get an inkling how the same man who gave us American Graphitti, Episode III and Raiders of the Lost Ark could also inflict Ewoks, The Battle for Endor, Crystal Skull and Jar Jar Binks upon his fans. Either George Lucas has hated his fans for years, or he’s just plain nuts. Now we find out that Mr. Arndt had been working on movie treatments for months, while, at the same time Lucas was telling people he was planning on retiring to make art films. I can’t think of a bad film that Michael Arndt has written – the man’s won and Academy Award, for Pete’s sake! So I think this is very good news! And hopefully, we won’t get any more “Sitting Ducks” with somebody other than Lucas writing the dialog.
I recall reading that Lucas said there would be 3 trilogies, 9 movies, and the 3rd reveals the power behind the Force and how it shaped the first 6 to its plan. But I also recall him saying that he wrote the whole saga as one movie, which the studios told him was impossible, so he was forced to break it into many. Not to mention that in the Lucas-approved newspaper strip, Luke’s father was named as Tan Skywalker.
Given that I grew up watching and loving this series, I hope Disney has enough influence on this project to help breathe life back into it. They really helped out Marvel with their movies and I hope the same can be said for this franchise.