It’s obviously been known for months now that Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford will all be returning to reprise their roles in the next Star Wars film, thanks to the diligent work of industry insiders such as Palm Beach Illustrated and people who have movie scoop sites to fill. But for what it’s worth, today comes yet more unofficial speculation on the matter from one “George Lucas,” a former, possibly disgruntled employee of Lucasfilm, whom Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed, presumably out of a mixture of bemused curiosity and pity. “We had already signed Mark and Carrie and Harrison—or we were pretty much in final stages of negotiation,” this man said, waxing nostalgic over the time he built the space-railroad and made it space-run, before asking his buddy Disney if it could spare 4 trillion dimes.
“Maybe I’m not supposed to say that,” he grumbled, likely not without a little bitterness. “I think they want to announce that with some big whoop-de-do, but we were negotiating with them.” Lucas then halfheartedly tried to play the younger man’s game, and speak in the vague language of the Internet so that it might take him seriously: “I won’t say whether the negotiations were successful or not." Lucas then slipped into a 10-minute reverie on how, in the old days, the assistants used to bring him his lunch just like he ordered it, before slipping down to the kitchen to stare glumly at a jar of Miracle Whip. “Whoop-de-do,” he muttered.