George Lucas
“Already Signed” Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill for Star Wars Episode VII
Oops! George Lucas may have just stolen the thunder from his lead stars. The Star Wars creator accidentally revealed in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek that Harrison Ford (Han Solo), Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) and Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) have already signed on for Star Wars: Episode VII.
“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,'” Lucas, 68, said of Disney buying Lucasfilm, and planning to release Star Wars: Episode VII in 2015.
“Maybe I’m not supposed to say that,” he added. “I think they want to announce that with some big whoop-de-do, but we were negotiating with them.”
Lucas teased, “I won’t say whether the negotiations were successful or not.”
The casting has yet to be confirmed by Disney and director J.J. Abrams, but Fisher, 56, and Hamill, 61, have hinted they will return.
“They’re talking to us,” Hamill told Entertainment Tonight in February. “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 . . . I can tell you right away that we haven’t signed any contracts. 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.”
usmagazine.com