There’s an exciting bit of news that seemed to fly very much under the radar recently, until it was noticed by a member of the Star Wars Leaks subreddit, and it’s that Larry Kasdan is apparently directing a six-part documentary about George Lucas and ILM.
That was revealed in a recent interview that composer James Newton Howard did with the Epicleff Media Youtube channel. In the interview (which lasted more than an hour), Howard talked about some of his recent work and revealed what he’s working on next. He said this (with a couple of comments from the hosts sprinkled in, which I’ve skipped over and denoted with elipses):
“One never knows. A couple things I am excited about is my friend Larry Kasdan is directing a six-part documentary on George Lucas and ILM, which is amazing. … Yeah, I’m scoring it. I’ve scored it, pretty much. Pretty much in the box. … And then they’re doing, his son, Jon Kasdan, is executive producing a ten-part episodic version of Willow. Do you remember Willow, that movie? This is at Lucasfilm and I think it’s going to be amazing. And then there’s other things, you know. But that’s, I’m also trying to balance my life a bit, because I ain’t no spring chicken.”
In this answer about what’s upcoming for him, Howard actually reveals two projects that we didn’t know he was a part of – one of which we hadn’t heard anything about at all! He mentions that he’s scoring the Willow series, which was previously announced as coming to Disney+. Howard says that it’s going to be a ten episode series, so that sounds like it’s a limited series run and he’s providing the score for it. So that’s exciting!
But the project we didn’t know anything about was this documentary about George Lucas, and this is the first time we’ve heard anything about it. So I’m guessing that Howard probably jumped things a little bit and revealed more than he was supposed to, but I’m glad he did! This sounds like a really great project and I’m extremely curious to learn more. George Lucas is one of the great creatives in film history, and not only is he the genius behind Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and more, but he also has been on the cutting edge of revolutionizing the film industry at almost every turn. That’s exemplified in many areas but perhaps none more so than ILM (Industrial Light & Magic), which is by far the gold standard for visual effects in the industry and has been totally game-changing. I can think of few people and subjects more worth profiling than Lucas, especially in this industry.
And I can’t think of a better choice to do this than Larry Kasdan. He’s directed a number of films and therefore is no stranger to the job, but he’s most well-known as the writer for some of Lucas’s most famous projects: The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. More recently, since Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney, Kasdan returned to the Star Wars franchise to write The Force Awakens and Solo: A Star Wars Story. He’s very familiar with Lucas’s two most prominent franchises and some of his best-loved projects, and therefore he seems uniquely positioned to be able to tell some of these stories.
Like I said, we really don’t know anything about this, since this is the first time we’ve heard of it. But consider me immediately on-board with this, and I can’t wait to learn more about it.
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