Today in Star Wars rumors: Ryan Gosling, Zac Efron, and Leonardo DiCaprio all considered for Star Wars
Disney has hinted it could finally make some official Star Wars-related announcements at its D23 Expo on Aug. 9. Until then, everyone has agreed to wait patiently, perhaps passing the time by purchasing some of these fine Disney/Star Wars products. (Look, it’s an inflatable Jabba The Hutt with Mickey Mouse ears! It’s cuddly and canon now.) That is, unless you’d prefer to play with some casting rumors, in which case Latino Review passes along a report that Ryan Gosling, Zac Efron, and Leonardo DiCaprio have all been called in for meetings about joining the franchise, which you can similarly toss around or gaze upon in disbelief.
The site—which does have a pretty good track record on scoops, and an absolutely stellar track record of getting angry at people who question its scoops—claims that what it knows “for sure is Gosling went in for Skywalker’s son. Yes, that’s right Luke’s kid,” with Gosling’s half-lidded stoicism obviously lending itself to the quiet confidence of a youngish Jedi. (“May the Force…,” Gosling Skywalker would say, trailing off as a smirk lifts both the corner of his lip and his lightsaber.) Efron, the report says, “could be a Solo kid,” channeling the natural roguishness he displayed when he killed all those bounty hunters in High School Musical 2. But DiCaprio’s meeting about being in Star Wars, surprisingly, immediately went nowhere, with Latino Review averring that he passed in order to do Warner Bros.’ Robotech movie, perhaps fulfilling his recent avowal to “fly around the world doing good for the environment” by doing so in a giant battlin’ robot.
Or perhaps not—and not that it really matters. Latino Review declares right up front to “EXPECT DENIALS,” both from director J.J. Abrams and anyone else skeptical that he might reboot the biggest franchise in the world by using the unnecessary distraction of name actors, or that those established actors would take on the needless burden of linking themselves to a film so fraught with fan expectation and cynicism. And so, right on cue, Ryan Gosling’s representatives have already flatly denied the report—thereby implicitly proving the report correct, because you were told to expect it. Indeed, one could (and one will), safely report that lots of actors are meeting about Star Wars, so long as they are covered by the caveat to expect denials. For example: John Schneider is in the running to play Luke’s cousin, Bo Skywalker, but you should expect denials. And so on. And that’s the sort of fun we can all toy around with for the next several weeks, if not the next several years.