TORONTO — Christopher Walken as Han Solo? It almost happened, according to a new book that goes inside the Star Wars phenomenon.
In How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, writer Chris Taylor reveals director George Lucas wanted Harrison Ford to play Solo in the 1977 film but changed his mind and planned to offer the job to Walken.
Lucas was reportedly worried audiences would be distracted by Ford, who starred in his previous film, American Graffiti.
According to the book, Lucas waived his $500,000 director’s fee for the first Star Wars and went on to earn most of the billions of dollars in profit from the franchise and its merchandise rights. Lucas sold the film rights to Disney in 2012 for $4 billion.
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Here are more fun facts about Star Wars from Taylor’s book, which comes out at the end of September.
– Six years before Star Wars, Lucas was working in a studio with voice actor Terry McGovern, who brought in his friend Bill Wookey. McGovern, who had been smoking marijuana, ad-libbed the line “I think I just ran over a Wookey back there.” Lucas wrote it down, changed the spelling, and used it as the name of Chewbacca’s species.
– The droid R2-D2 got its name from the rolls of film used during a sound edit for American Graffiti. The rolls were labelled “R” for radio and “D” for dialogue and numbered. According to the book, sound editor Walter Murch yelled out: “I need R2-D2” and Lucas jotted it down.
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– Taylor’s book claims Lucas made American Graffiti as the first in a trilogy of movies about the period before, during and after the Vietnam War. Star Wars was conceived as the final chapter — about “a large technological empire going after a small group of freedom fighters.” The trilogy’s second film was to be called Apocalypse Now — which ended up being made by Francis Ford Coppola.
– Disney, Universal and United Artists all turned down the original Star Wars. The movie was eventually made by 20th Century Fox, which holds the rights to it in perpetuity. But it wasn’t only studios who seemed unimpressed by the film. When Lucas showed a rough cut to director Brian De Palma, he was mocked. “What is this Force s***?” asked De Palma, who also wondered why no one bled after they were shot. Still, De Palma eventually agreed to co-write the film’s iconic opening crawl that starts with “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”
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