In late August 2012 Star Wars fans from all around the world gathered in Orlando, Florida for the sixth official Star Wars convention, Celebration VI. The lineup was strong despite the live-action movies, always the brightest and biggest stars in the franchise’s galaxy, coming to an end seven years earlier. Though he was not scheduled to attend, series creator George Lucas was there. Publicly, he was just there to make a surprise appearance during the panel for the animated The Clone Wars TV show that he created and oversaw. But privately he was there to talk to original trilogy stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher. They were brought to a conference room away from the convention floor where George broke the news: he was working on a new Star Wars trilogy and wanted them to reprise their iconic roles.
My wife casually said, “What if he wants to do a new Star Wars movie?” and I just laughed at her. — Mark Hamill
George’s motivations were not purely creative. He’d decided to sell his prized company Lucasfilm and wanted a sweetener to entice prospective buyers. And there might have been nothing in the industry more desirable than a new live-action Star Wars movie. After coming up with some ideas for this new sequel trilogy, Lucas tapped Oscar-winning screenwriter Michael Arndt to begin working on a script for Episode VII, brought on Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi writer Lawrence Kasdan and producer/writer Simon Kinberg as consultants, and contacted Hamill, Fisher, and Harrison Ford to gauge their interest. Even Ford, long known to have an uneasy relationship with the role of Han Solo, agreed to return.
As the summer of 2012 began to turn to fall, the negotiations between Disney and Lucasfilm entered their final stretches. Once the broad outlines of a deal were agreed upon, Lucas relented to letting a few Disney executives see the treatments for the new trilogy that he had been working on with Arndt with help from Kinberg, and Kasdan. Disney CEO Bob Iger, Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn, and Executive Vice President Alan Braverman were the selected few, with Lucas even having them sign NDAs to protect his story. “We thought from a storytelling perspective they had a lot of potential,” said Iger. On September 6th, 2012, new Lucasfilm co-chairperson Kathleen Kennedy addressed the assembled divisions of the company to announce her intention to produce more Star Wars films [1]. On October 30th, the sale of Lucasfilm was announced to the public, along with the news of a new Star Wars trilogy.
On December 18th, 2015 Star Wars Episode VII — The Force Awakens opened to glowing reviews and massive box office returns. After the initial high wore off, people began wondering what George’s plan for the movie had been, since both he and director J.J. Abrams had said his outlines were abandoned. Through various interviews, books, and social media posts, details have slipped out.
“We’re making seven, eight, and nine.”
Sometime in late 2011/early 2012, George decided to kick the tires on the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Episodes VII, VIII, and IX. After George decided to make a new trilogy, he moved quickly. He reached out to old friend and all-star film producer Kathleen Kennedy sometime in the first half of 2012, hoping to bring her on as co-chair of Lucasfilm. The two then approached screenwriter Michael Arndt about writing the entire trilogy around May. After working on The Hunger Games, he wanted to avoid big Hollywood blockbusters for a while but the allure of a young woman yearning to become a Jedi was enough to get him to sign on. When Kennedy was officially announced on June 1st, many saw it as a signal that the company was getting back into the movie-making business. But the cinematic Star Wars universe was thought dead, so most speculation was about Indiana Jones 5. Later that same month, members of Lucasfilm’s story team learned the news. Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were told at Celebration VI in August, and Harrison Ford was likely called and informed at roughly the same time. Lucasfilm as a whole was then made aware in September. Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg were brought on as consultants by October. Sometime around the finalizing of the sale, Michael Arndt turned in a 40 to 50-page treatment. Vulture said it was a treatment of Episode VII while Deadline claimed it was of the entire trilogy. In a conference call on the day of the sale announcement, Disney CEO Bob Iger referenced a “pretty extensive and detailed treatment for what would be the next three movies, the trilogy.” Then the sale to Disney happened was announced to the world at the end of October. And things really got going.
In December of 2012, production designers Doug Chiang and Rick Carter and ILM Creative Director David Nakabayashi met to pick artists for the “dream team” for Episode VII. The day after the meeting, Rick Carter met with George Lucas at Skywalker Ranch. The design team had its first meeting on January 9th, 2013. In attendance were writer Michael Arndt and director J.J. Abrams, though the latter would not be officially announced as attached to the project until the 25th and due to post-production on Star Trek Into Darkness and would only attend weekly teleconferences with the team until May when he joined full time [3]. The design team, or “Visualists” as Rick Carter would call them, would meet with George Lucas on January 16th at Skywalker Ranch, where he would be shown artwork of Luke Skywalker, the Jedi Temple he had exiled himself to, and the training of the main character. This appears to be his last involvement with the film.
The following is everything currently known about George Lucas’ plan for the Star Wars sequel trilogy, circa 2012.
The Stuff We Know For Sure
Let’s start with the things we know for sure. The story George was working on changed quite a bit during the year or so he was in control, but one thing remained constant. It was always about a young woman and her quest to become a Jedi Knight. In his original outline, she was a 14-year-old named Taryn [4]. As George continued to develop the story, he also changed her name a couple of times. She was also called Thea and, honest-to-God, Winkie [4]. Thea appears to be the name when George stepped away as there is concept art from the first couple of months of art development that uses that name. George also conceived of Luke Skywalker as hiding from the world in a cave after something traumatic. He likened the hero to Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now [4]. Also, in the treatment George handed over in 2012, Luke Skywalker died in Episode VIII [4].
Midi-chlorians and the Whills would have also factored into the story in some way [5]. Here’s what George said about them during an interview with James Cameron for his The Story of Science Fiction project.
[The next three Star Wars films] were going to get into a microbiotic world. But there’s this world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force.
Back in the day, I used to say ultimately what this means is we’re just cars, vehicles, for the Whills to travel around in…. We’re vessels for them. And the conduit is the midi-chlorians. The midi-chlorians are the ones that communicate with the Whills. The Whills, in a general sense, they are the Force.
All the way back to — with the Jedi and the Force and everything — the whole concept of how things happen was laid out completely from [the beginning] to the end. But I never got to finish. I never got to tell people about it.
If I’d held onto the company I could have done it, and then it would have been done. Of course, a lot of the fans would have hated it, just like they did Phantom Menace and everything, but at least the whole story from beginning to end would be told.
As part of the book Star Wars Archives: Episodes I-III: 1999–2005, author Paul Duncan interviewed George Lucas. During this interview, George talked more about his plans for the sequel trilogy.
Paul Duncan: What about the stormtroopers? They look robotic, but they’re not.
George Lucas: How do you know what they are?
Paul Duncan: Did you have a different idea of what they were?
George Lucas: Yeah, they started out as clones. Once all the clones were killed, the Empire picked up recruits, like militia. They fought, but they weren’t very good at what they did.
Paul Duncan: That’s why they kept missing.
George Lucas: That’s why they kept missing. Then after the Rebels won, there were no more stormtroopers in my version of the third trilogy.
I had planned for the first trilogy to be about the father, the second trilogy to be about the son, and the third trilogy to be about the daughter and the grandchildren.
Episode VII, VIII, and IX would take ideas from what happened after the Iraq War. “Okay, you fought the war, you killed everybody, now what are you going to do?” Rebuilding afterwards is harder than starting a rebellion or fighting the war. When you win the war and you disband the opposing army, what do they do? The stormtroopers would be like Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist fighters that joined ISIS and kept on fighting. The stormtroopers refuse to give up when the Republic win.
They want to be stormtroopers forever, so they go to a far corner of the galaxy, start their own country and their own rebellion.
There’s a power vacuum so gangsters, like the Hutts, are taking advantage of the situation, and there is chaos. The key person is Darth Maul, who had been resurrected in The Clone Wars cartoons — he brings all the gangs together.
Paul Duncan: Was Darth Maul the main villain?
George Lucas: Yeah, but he’s very old, and we have two versions of him. One is with a set of cybernetic legs like a spider, and then later on he has metal legs and he was a little bit bigger, more of a superhero. We did all this in the animated series, he was in a bunch of episodes.
Darth Maul trained a girl, Darth Talon, who was in the comic books as his apprentice. She was the new Darth Vader, and most of the action was with her. So these were the two main villains of the trilogy. Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because, as the Empire falls, he takes over.
The movies are about how Leia — I mean, who else is going to be the leader? — is trying to build the Republic. They still have the apparatus of the Republic but they have to get it under control from the gangsters. That was the main story.
It starts out a few years after Return of the Jedi and we establish pretty quickly that there’s this underworld, there are these offshoot stormtroopers who started their own planets, and that Luke is trying to restart the Jedi. He puts the word out, so out of 100,000 Jedi, maybe 50 or 100 are left. The Jedi have to grow again from scratch, so Luke has to find two- and three-year-olds, and train them. It’ll be 20 years before you have a new generation of Jedi.
By the end of the trilogy Luke would have rebuilt much of the Jedi, and we would have the renewal of the New Republic, with Leia, Senator Organa, becoming the Supreme Chancellor in charge of everything. So she ended up being the Chosen One.
George also expanded on Midi-chlorians:
This is the cosmology. The Force is the energy, the fuel, and without it everything would fall apart.
The Force is a metaphor for God, and God is essentially unknowable. But behind it is another metaphor, which fits so well into the movie that I couldn’t resist it.
Midi-chlorians are the equivalent of mitochondria in living organisms and photosynthesis in plants — I simply combined them for easier consumption by the viewer. Mitochondria create the chemical energy that turns one cell into two cells.
I like to think that there is a unified reality to life and that it exists everywhere in the universe and that it controls things, but you can also control it.
That’s why I split it into the Personal Force and the Cosmic Force. The Personal Force is the energy field created by our cells interacting and doing things while we are alive. When we die, we lose our persona and our energy is assimilated into the Cosmic Force.
If we have enough Midi-chlorians in our body, we can have a certain amount of control over our Personal Force and learn how to use it, like the Buddhist practive of being able to walk on hot coals.
And the Whills:
The Whills are a microscopic, single-celled lifeform like amoeba, fungi, and bacteria. There’s something like 100,000 times more Whills than there are Midi-chlorians, and there are about 10,000 times more Midi-chlorians than there are human cells.
The only microscopic entities that can go into the human cells are the Midi-chlorians. They are born in the cells. The Midi-chlorians provide the energy for human cells to split and create life. The Whills are single-celled animals that feed on the Force. The more of the Force there is, the better off they are. So they have a very intense symbiotic relationship with the Midi-chlorians and the Midi-chlorians effectively work for the Whills.
It is estimated that we have 100 trillion microbes in our body and we are made up of about 90% bacteria and 10% human cells. So who is in service to whom?
I know this is the kind of thing that fans just go berserk over because they say, “We want it to be mysterious and magical”, and “You’re just doing science.” Well, this isn’t science.
This is just as mythological as anything else in Star Wars. It sounds more scientific, but it’s a fiction.
It’s saying there is a big symbiotic relationship to create life, and to create the Force, but if you look at all the life-forms in the universe, most of them are one-celled organisms. I think of one-celled organisms as an advanced form of life because they’ve been able to travel through the universe. They have their own spaceships — those meteorites that we get every once in a while. They’ve been living on those things for thousands of years, they’ve been frozen, unfrozen, and can survive almost anything.
The one-celled organisms have to have a balance. You have to have good ones and bad ones otherwise it would extinguish life. And if they go out of balance, the dark side takes over.
While it’s been widely reported that Lucasfilm told Vanity Fair the leads of George’s outline were “teenagers,” George himself implied they were in their 20s and in reference to that said that it wasn’t “the Phantom Menace again.” It appears that George started with the main character as a teenager and then aged her up during development. He also said the story was about the grandchildren of Anakin Skywalker.
The original saga was about the father, the children, and the grandchildren. I mean, that’s not a secret, anyway, it’s even in the novels and everything. And then the children were in their 20s and everything and so it wasn’t [The] Phantom Menace again. — George Lucas
During a panel celebrating the concept art of The Force Awakens at the Celebration 2016 convention, Lucasfilm creative executive Rayne Roberts alluded to George’s work including the grandchildren of the original trilogy:
We have an expression a lot of times where we say the story wants something that we may not want or we might think ‘oh I don’t want that’ but the story wants it. We were thinking we don’t want him [Kylo Ren] to be like Vader but we kept coming back to that and there were some familial connections we inherited from some of George’s original ideas and we moved some things around and at the end we kind of arrived at the fact that Kylo was the son of Leia and Han.
In the middle of October 2012, to talk about the sale to Disney and everything it encompassed, George and Kathleen Kennedy sat down for an interview with Lucasfilm senior director of public relations Lynne Hale. During this interview, George mentioned that the treatment he turned over had some holes that needed to be filled in and he thought he could help do that in his role as creative consultant.
Lynne Hale: What do you see your role as, creative consultant? What does that mean?
George Lucas: I just said that I would back her up and I would be there… and especially helping with the script. There’s a lot of blank spots in the story treatment that I hope we can fill in.
That’s all the stuff that is known for certain about George’s ideas. It all comes from official Lucasfilm sources or George himself. The following is speculation based on numerous sources.
Educated Guesses
These things have not been stated outright as having been part of George’s plans through official releases, but are things that could have been part of his version due to timing or other reasons.
Early outlines for the movie centered around characters that The Art of The Force Awakens referred to as Sam and Kira, though those names were created by J.J. Abrams and company. While George referred to the latter as Thea, it’s likely he referred to the former as Skylar. That name is found in storyboards in The Art of The Force Awakens that also use the name Thea and Pablo Hidalgo has confirmed that the name “Skylar” came from George. Arndt described Sam and Kira, respectively, as “pure charisma” and a “loner, hothead, gear-headed, badass.” [1]
That’s the only released concept art of Sam from early 2013. Kira would morph fairly seamlessly into Rey while Sam would go through numerous changes before settling into Finn.
From the very beginning we sort of settled on very quickly that we wanted the girl, Rey, to be a scavenger. We always wanted her to be the ultimate outsider and the ultimate disenfranchised person, because that person has the longest journey… And then we were struggling to figure out who the male lead was going to be. I remember we talked about pirates and merchant marines and all this stuff. — Michael Arndt
According to original screenwriter Michael Arndt, his first attempts, even when he was still working with George, ran into a Luke Skywalker shaped stumbling block:
Early on I tried to write versions of the story where [Rey] is at home, her home is destroyed, and then she goes on the road and meets Luke. And then she goes and kicks the bad guy’s ass. It just never worked and I struggled with this. This was back in 2012. It just felt like every time Luke came in and entered the movie, he just took it over. Suddenly you didn’t care about your main character anymore because, ‘Oh f–k, Luke Skywalker’s here. I want to see what he’s going to do.
Some of the very first concept art done for the movie was that of a remote Jedi Temple where Luke Skywalker was hiding out. George approved at least one such piece [2]:
We know of at least one other concept piece that George approved, this painting of Luke by Christian Alzmann:
From Alzmann’s Instagram post of the image:
My first image I made for Star Wars : The Force Awakens. This was January of 2013. Luke was being described as a Col. Kurtz type hiding from the world in a cave. I couldn’t believe I was getting to make this image and I got a George “Fabulouso” on it to boot.
Phil Szostak, the author of The Art of The Force Awakens and The Art of The Last Jedi, revealed that the Luke Skywalker seen in The Last Jedi had his genesis in ideas from late 2012.
So, the late-2012 idea of a Luke Skywalker haunted by the betrayal of one of his students, in self-imposed exile & spiritually in “a dark place”, not only precedes Rian Johnson’s involvement in Star Wars but J.J. Abrams’, as well.
Again it’s mentioned that Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now was an inspiration for this take on the character.
Doug Chiang created a concept piece of Luke’s X-Wing submerged in the waters of the planet he was exiled on in February 2013 [2].
Another late 2012/early 2013 idea appears to be Mono Lake in California as inspiration for the planet that would become Jakku. A planet strewn with junk comes from Michael Arndt at the very first meeting of the design team on January 9th [1], so it may have originated from the Lucas/Arndt days.
While not much about Han Solo or Leia Organa’s roles in George and Michael’s treatment is known, there are several pieces of concept art from early 2013 of the Millennium Falcon on or above the planet of Felucia, which was briefly glimpsed during the Order 66 Jedi purge montage in Star Wars Episode III — Revenge of the Sith.[1] During an art review meeting in February 2013 glimpsed in the official behind the scenes documentary included with the home release, an entire artboard can be seen devoted to the planet [3]. Lucasfilm Story Group member Pablo Hidalgo has confirmed that Felucia factored into George’s plans at some point.
There are several mentions of pirates early on in The Art of The Force Awakens. In the very first meeting of the art department, Rick Carter tacked up pictures of paintings of pirates. There are a handful of concept pieces of pirates or what appear to be pirates. They also seem to be related to Felucia.
Text in The Art of The Last Jedi could imply that Han would have shown up later in Episode VII than he does now. Additionally, Harrison Ford told GQ that as he remembers it, his first call with George Lucas about Episode VII included the detail that Han would die.
Ford’s least expected late-career reprise was his return to the world of Star Wars. “I was surprised,” he concedes. The first call came from George Lucas. “It was proposed that I might make another appearance as Han Solo. And I think it was mentioned, even in the first call, that he would not survive. That’s something I’d been arguing for for some period of time” — Ford had unsuccessfully lobbied for Solo to die in Return of the Jedi in 1983 — “so I said okay.”
In a Q&A with Entertainment Weekly writer Anthony Breznican done shortly after the release of The Force Awakens, original writer Michael Arndt implied that his early ideas had Han surviving Episode VII:
I had thought that the Han story and the Leia story was just about them coming back together. At the end of the movie they would have reconciled and they would have gotten over their differences and you’d be like “okay, well, bad stuff has happened but at least they’re back together again.”
A tweet from Phil Szostak implies that it wasn’t decided that Han would die until the summer of 2013.
In a video for Rolling Stone, Mark Hamill said that Leia “fully develop[ed] her Force sensibilities” in George’s “original outline for 7, 8, 9.” In a separate interview, he said that Luke would have trained her in Episode IX before dying in George’s version. Due to some discrepancies with other sources and other interviews with Hamill, it’s possible that this was the plan in the 80s but not the 2010s. Star Wars Fascinating Facts says that Luke died in Episode VIII in the outline George gave Disney. In yet another interview with Hamill, from February 2013, he mentioned that George had told the original cast that if they didn’t want to do the trilogy, their characters would be written out. This implies that their appearances might have been essentially cameos in George’s 2012 ideas, which could clash with Leia. Additionally, right after the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney, Hamill said that George didn’t talk story during the original 2012 meeting.
A character similar to Darth Talon, a red-skinned Twi’lek from the Star Wars Legacy comic series known for seducing one of Luke Skywalker’s descendants to the dark side, makes a number of appearances in early concept art. George has confirmed that she was part of his plans for Episodes VII, VIII, and IX[6]. Interestingly enough, George Lucas had paired her up with Darth Maul before, asking game development studio Red Fly to include her in their Darth Maul game just before the time he likely started thinking about a sequel trilogy. Pablo Hidalgo has confirmed that a Darth Talon-like character was in George’s plans at some point. Acting at the orders of a greater power codenamed “Uber” she seduced the son of Han and Leia to the dark side. Uber may have been Darth Maul at some point.
The art above is accompanied by the caption “The tattoos are a lot simpler. They follow a rhythm and they flow. And that’s the evil thing puppeteering her from behind.” The character also seems to appear in a series of storyboards titled Seduction from February 2013, the earliest known storyboards from the movie.
She also pops up on the very edge of a piece just titled “Bar” by Christian Alzmann from the same month.
Originally, R2-D2 and C-3PO showed up together, but Lawrence Kasdan told Michael Arndt to split them up.
In 2016, the novel Star Wars: Bloodline was released. It focused on Princess Leia as a Senator six years before the events of The Force Awakens. In it, the Republic Senate is split between the Populists and Centrists. Leia is a Populist and forms a friendship with a Centrist, Ransolm Casterfo. Casterfo gets manipulated into revealing Leia’s true parentage. Around the release of the book, Pablo Hidalgo revealed that Casterfo was “ a character that existed, in various forms, in the earliest versions of the TFA story.”
Out of Date
The rest of the article is kept for historical purposes as I no longer think the included things were part of George’s ideas for the sequel trilogy.
An interview with J.J Abrams from Entertainment Weekly published shortly after the release of The Force Awakens mentioned some previous ideas for the movie:
Some of the early MacGuffins of the movie — the thing that drives a movie’s plot — were a search for Darth Vader’s remains, or a quest to the underwater wreckage of the second Death Star to recover a key piece of history about sacred Jedi sites in the galaxy.
That mention of an underwater Death Star, in particular, is interesting, as Doug Chiang and Ian McCaig created a painting (at the very top of this article) showing just that in February 2013, shortly after George left the project.
The caption for that piece:
So when the adventure’s over, Kira finds a hidden map inside the Emperor’s tower of the second Death Star. And the map tells you where the Jedi are and where Luke is hiding — Ian McCaig.
Two more Death Star concept pieces were created in April. Ryan Church made one called Underwater Emperor Room.
The caption for this piece:
Rick (Carter, Co-Production Designer) said ‘What if the Emperor’s chamber has crash-landed after the second Death Star explosion?’ That doesn’t make any sense, but that’s when Rick knows he has something. He’ll say, ‘Exactly!’
And Doug Chiang drew one called Falcon Underwater:
And the caption for this piece:
Part of the journey of the story is that they take the Falcon, go underwater, and find the Emperor’s tower [laughs]. The Falcon is watertight because it’s airtight, so it can go underwater, right?
Star Wars Fascinating Facts throws a little cold water on this, seemingly implying that the submerged Death Star idea arose from the art meetings, which happened almost entirely after George left the project [4]. In an interview, Iain McCaig seems to say that he came up with the idea on his own, responding to the prompt “what would you want to see in a Star Wars movie?”
After those last two pieces were done in April, The Art of The Last Jedi described the story thusly in May, with quotes from Doug Chiang:
“After Return of the Jedi, when the Empire fell, Luke went through a period of turmoil. He decides to reform the Jedi, Luke being the last. So he creates his own Jedi academy and recruits people.” One of Luke’s pupils was the character then known as the “Jedi Killer.” “Ultimately, he turns against Luke. There’s a big fight, and the Jedi Killer is wounded and cast aside. There’s this big through-line of the Jedi Killer wanting revenge on Luke. And that’s partly why he takes on this persona of Darth Vader: to haunt Luke.”
Some of this appears to have survived into the final film, as the map R2-D2 has in the movie that helps lead to the first Jedi Temple came from when he was hooked into the first Death Star in A New Hope.
Interestingly, the first teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker ends on the remains of one of the Death Stars sitting in a body of water. So it appears this idea has finally found its way to the screen. Right after that shot, the voice of Emperor Palpatine can be heard cackling. This wouldn’t be noteworthy here, except Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy told MTV News that some of the ideas they are using now were around since the development of The Force Awakens.
That goes back to when we were talking about The Force Awakens and, you know, just the whole blueprint of where we’ve ended up now has kind of been in the works since then. — Kathleen Kennedy
She doesn’t say when, exactly, during the development of Episode VII it came up, but her mention of “the whole blueprint of where we’ve ended up now” sounds kind of like it could go back to the George Lucas days. He did turn over outlines for VII, VIII, and IX.
In an interview with Den of Geek about his role in Knightfall, the History Channel’s fictional series about the Knights Templar, Mark Hamill seems to say that he was told his role in the sequel trilogy would be bigger than what it has been.
That’s what I was hoping when I came back: no cameos and a run-of-the-trilogy contract. Did I get any of those things? Because as far as I’m concerned, the end of VII is really the beginning of VIII. I got one movie! They totally hornswoggled (tricked) me.
Updates
(1/3/2018)
Just days after posting this, Lucasfilm Story Group member Pablo Hidalgo tweeted out some information about the early versions of Episode VII (Skyler is another name for the Sam/Finn character).
And in 2016, he confirmed that Thea (Kira/Rey), Skyler, Darth Talon, and the planet of Felucia were in George’s plans.
(1/6/2018)
Added quote from Harrison Ford about George Lucas telling him during their first Episode VII related call that Han would die. Also added more information about the timeline.
(1/17/2018)
Added to the timeline thanks to a transcript of an interview with Michael Arndt.
(6/14/2018)
Added information and quotes from George about the inclusion of the Whills in his sequel trilogy.
(6/26/2018)
Added information from Mark Hamill about Luke training Leia in Episode IX before dying.
(11/28/2018)
Added concept painting from artist Christian Alzmann that received a “Fabulouso” stamp from George Lucas.
(11/30/2018)
Added mention of early ideas for the movie from an EW interview with J.J. Abrams.
(3/6/2019)
Added quote from Mark Hamill implying that he expected a bigger role in the trilogy.
(4/17/2019)
Added bits from the Episode IX trailer and subsequent Kathleen Kennedy interviews. And the brief summary of part of the plot circa May 2013. Also tweaked the information about the treatment Michael Arndt turned in to executives around the time of the sale. Vulture claimed it was for just Episode VII while Deadline said it was for VII, VIII, and XI.
(4/20/2019)
Added information about Ransolm Casterfo being in the earliest versions of The Force Awakens.
(7/30/2019)
Added quote from Michael Arndt describing his thoughts that Han would survive Episode VII.
(04/17/2020)
Cleaned up some information around the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney.
(10/13/2020)
Added information from the book Star Wars Fascinating Facts by Lucasfilm Story Group member Pablo Hidalgo. This includes alternate names for Rey and when Luke died in George’s treatment.
(10/16/2020)
Restructured the article a little to differentiate between stuff that is known to have been part of George’s story, stuff that is speculated to have been part of his story, and things that I no longer think were part of it. Also added concept art of Thea by Iain McCaig and notes about pirates, and Leia possibly developing her Force abilities in George’s 7,8, and 9.
(11/9/2020)
Added a small note from an interview with Mark Hamill where he says that George offered to write Luke, Leia, and Han out of the sequel trilogy if they didn’t want to come back.
(11/10/2020)
Added information from an interview with George Lucas for the book Star Wars Archives: Episodes I-III: 1999–2005.
(1/28/2021)
Did some cleanup, added a tiny bit more from Star Wars Archives: Episodes I-III: 1999–2005, and brought in a mention from George that the treatment he turned over had “blank spots.”
[1] The Art of The Force Awakens
[2] The Art of The Last Jedi
[3] The Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey (Blu-ray/DVD Documentary)
[4] Star Wars Fascinating Facts
[5] James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction
[6] Star Wars Archives: Episodes I-III: 1999–2005