Now that Disney is at the helm, we’ll be getting annual doses of Star Wars for eternity, but it wasn’t all that long ago that the series’ future was far more unclear. Before The Force Awakens finally came to fruition and ushered in our bountiful new age of Star Wars, there were plenty other versions of Episode VII floating around, with a host of different filmmakers all taking a stab at continuing George Lucas’ space saga, including Lucas himself. Although details about the plots and lives of these movies that never were are still scant, WhatCulture put together a pretty illuminating video running through what we know about eight unproduced Episode VIIs.
Legend has it, Lucas had plans for a sequel trilogy as far back as 1977. At one point, he considered picking up directly after Return Of The Jedi. Another Lucas-helmed version would’ve had us catching up with the adventures of a 30-years-older Luke Skywalker, played by an appropriately aged Mark Hamill. And then there are all the different forms the film took after the Disney purchase, with Star Wars’ new owners waffling over whether they’d use Lucas’ ideas for the sequel and shopping it around to a few creators whose visions were too out there for the company’s liking. That’s undoubtedly what happened when LucasFilm approached David Fincher—yes, that David Fincher—to direct the big revival of Star Wars, a trilogy he sees as “the story of two slaves [C-3PO and R2-D2] who go from owner to owner, witnessing their masters’ folly, the ultimate folly of man.”