Another day, and more chatter about "Star Wars: Episode VII" and where it may or may not be headed. Yesterday came rumors that the upcoming film would revolve around the children of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa and Han Solo. And now, Mark Hamill himself has weighed in, and while he claims not to be sure where the next movie is going (we'd wager he's being a little coy), he does indicate he has enough information to take a pretty educated guess about what the next chapter in the saga will bring.
"I'm assuming, because I haven't talked to the writers, that these movies would be about our offspring — like my character would be sort of in the Obi-Wan range [as] an influential character," he told Entertainment Tonight. "When I found out [while making the original trilogy] that ultimate good news/bad news joke – the good news is there's a real attractive, hot girl in the universe; the bad news is she's your sister – I thought, 'Well, I'm going to wind up like Sir Alec [Guinness]. I'm going to be a lonely old hermit living out in some kind of desert igloo with a couple of robots.' "
But the main reason Hamill isn't privy to what screenwriter Michael Arndt, director J.J. Abrams and producer Kathleen Kennedy are up to, is for the simple reason that he hasn't yet talked to them nor has he signed any contracts. "They're talking to us. George [Lucas] wanted to know whether we'd be interested," Hamill shared (and remember, he and Carrie Fisher met with Lucas before the sale of Lucasfilm to talk about the sequels). "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."
So it seems we're a bit of way off yet from any formal announcements, and Hamill seems to want to make sure he isn't the only member of the original cast who ends up being signed up for duty. "Another thing I'd want to make sure of is are we going to have the whole gang back? Is Carrie and Harrison [Ford] and Billy Dee [Williams] and Tony Daniels, everybody that's around from the original [returning]? I want to make sure that everybody's on board here, rather than just one," he explained.
Hoping that the next film will "lighten up" in terms of tone and reintroduce practical effects with CGI, Hamill seems to be as much a fan as a player when it comes to 'Episode VII.' But like everyone else, he's a bit in the dark about what is truly up the sleeves of the filmmakers.