Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher will all be in the next Star Wars film, series creator George Lucas confirmed, and the super-director said the trio's return was pretty much sealed before Disney even acquired Lucasfilm.
In
an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Lucas revealed that the trio were signed or nearly signed to return as the core trio of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa before Disney bought his production company for $4.05 billion and announced plans to produce "Star Wars: Episode VII."
"We had already signed Mark and Carrie and Harrison—or we were pretty much in final stages of negotiation," he told Businessweek. "So I called them to say, ‘Look, this is what’s going on.’”
Lucas quickly backtracked, fearing he was revealing something that Disney had hoped to unveil at a later date.
“Maybe I’m not supposed to say that," he said. "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.”
Websites have been full of reports and rumors of the trio's return in their iconic roles.
A report last month from Latino Review claimed that Ford has already signed on to reprise his role as Han Solo, and Fisher seemingly confirmed to the Palm Beach Post that she was returning as Princess Leia before
a publicist for the actress said she was just joking. Last month,
Hammil told ETonline.com that the trio were still in negotiations during an interview promoting his new DVD, "Sushi Girl."
"They're talking to us," Hamill said. "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."
