More 'Star Wars' news as Disney hires Oscar winning writer Arndt

That was fast.

I guessed, assumed, or just thought that it would be a few months before a writer or director would be announced for Star Wars: Episode VII. But Disney is not wasting time on their $4 billion investment and have hired Academy Award winning script writer Michael Arndt to adapt George Lucas’ story idea into a working screenplay; Arndt won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Little Miss Sunshine and got another nomination for Toy Story 3. He's also penned Hunger Games: Catching Fire which is near completion, as well the up coming (2014) big screen adventure of Disney's Phineas and Ferb, and the screenplay for the currently unknown title of Pixars 2015 release. Rumors of his hiring started almost as soon as the hand-over, with word coming he had already a 50 page draft, based on Lucas’ idea. There is even a suggestion he’ll handle writing the entire trilogy, as Episode’s VIII and IX will be released two years apart from each other after the 2015 release date of Episode VII.

As for a director, that still in the air. However, word has come that some of the biggest directors are not interested in helming it, including Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino and Zack Snyder. Since Matthew Vaughn dropped out of the X Men film rather abruptly, rumors began circulating he’ll be offered the chair. But Vaughn is a notoriously choosy director, also fairly independent, and Lucas is a total micro-manager (even though he says his role will be minimum in the new trilogy) so I begin to wonder if he can handle being told to do something he knows that can creatively hurt a film. Still, Disney has been pretty determined and open about handing the reigns over to directors with little experience with huge budgets; they’ve succeed financially.

As for the out of left field announcement of this trilogy, it seems Lucas has been working on for a while, and actors Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford were told by Lucas well over a year ago that he was moving forward with Episode VII, VIII and IX. And since announcement, all three have made comments to the press -somewhat- that they might be interested in returning. Obviously, with prequel trilogy set some thirty years prior to the events of A New Hope, this new one will be set somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty or sixty years after the events of Return of the Jedi, thus making the actors only co-stars. Still, it would be nice to see them return at least one more time.

Meanwhile, since this announcement, some fans have wondered if they’ll ever see the original trilogy on DVD unaltered. But from what I’ve read, it seems unlikely. Still, while 20th Century Fox will forever own Star Wars: A New Hope, it has distribution rights to The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi through 2020. And now that Lucas has sold Lucasfilm to Disney, Fox could probably release that first film in its original format, but I see that as highly unlikely for a few reasons, mostly not to piss off Lucas. Retiring from mainstream film making does not mean Fox will want to anger Lucas by going around his wishes. To be honest, my feelings are we’ll never see those unaltered films until Lucas shuttles of this mortal coil. But, I hope I’m wrong about that. What might be more likely is Disney buying out Fox’s distribution contract on Empire and Jedi, but whatever happens, its going to a nightmare to try and sell the series in any form of boxed set from now on when you consider Fox will never sell A New Hope to Disney.

As for the money Lucas made, his intention is to donate most of it to education.