You didn’t need to be a prescient Jedi master to predict the minute Disney and Lucasfilm made last week’s big, exciting announcement that the Star Wars galaxy would return to our screens, the rumours about who might be involved would start flying. And fly they have, with word on both Harrison Ford possibly being up for a return to Han Solo’s trousers and our first whisper-of-a-rumour about a director candidate.
Entertainment Weekly’s new hire, Geoff Boucher (formerly of the LA Times) has a source saying that Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher are all “upbeat” about returning to the franchise that helped launch their careers. While we naturally have to file this one in the soon-to-be-bulging New **Star Wars **Rumour File, it’s a hopeful sign that we really will see the three original leads passing the torch – or the lightsaber, or the blaster – to new characters.
Ford, who has never been the most vocal fan of Star Wars’ scripts, also thought Han should have died in Return Of The Jedi to give it more emotional weight. He was the least likely of the three to make a return, but the idea he’d even consider it makes us very happy indeed. And Boucher is not a man to spread wild rumours.
As to the director rumours, the gang at Collider have heard that Matthew Vaughn, who recently departed the big chair on X-Men: Days Of Future Past, could be in talks to pick up the megaphone for the new Star Wars outing, due in 2015.
Naturally, we’d expect the Mouse House and the Lucasfilm team to reach out to any number of experienced names, and Vaughn’s certain to be on their list. We even said as much in a recent podcast (take a listen below).
But until there are official announcements, we recommend having a Sarlacc pit-sized heap of salt handy to take with any Force source chatter…