Stopping by Jimmy Fallon's Tonight show, J.J. Abrams has revealed a new and surprising piece of Star Wars: The Force Awakens gossip. The director has collaborated with Lin-Manual Miranda - writer, composer and star of the buzzy Broadway musical Hamilton - on the music for a new cantina scene.
"I went to see Hamilton," Abrams explained, "and Lin-Manuel Miranda came up to me, and said, 'If you need music for the cantina, let me know!' I was like, 'does he know'?! Because basically we have a scene that's sort of our version of the cantina scene. John Williams had said he'd rather not write the music for that scene. So I emailed Lin, and he said, 'I'll drop everything!' We sent music files back and forth... the whole thing was nuts. So now in the movie is this music that Lin-Manuel Miranda and I wrote."
Miranda himself later added his voice to the conversation via Twitter. "We did [work together]," he said. "Worked on it between 6pm & 7:30 on 2 show days for the past 2 months. JJ is the best. Can't wait to see."
Rumours of a new cantina sequence - homaging the iconic scene in the original Star Wars - have been out there since the brief shots in the Comic-Con behind-the-scenes reel of Simon Pegg on what looked like it might be a cantina set (at about the 2:00 mark in the vid below). So now the womp rat's officially out of the bag. Lin-Manuel Miranda is the new Figrin D'an. Or something. Suggestions that Greedo will be shown in flashback singing about not throwing away his shot have just been made up by us.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is, you might possibly be aware, out on December 17. For our online low-down, click here, and for much more, the Star Wars-packed new issue of Empire is out now.