Earlier this year we discussed a hot “spec script” dubbed Chewie – a comedy depicting the making of Star Wars from Chewbacca’s point of view.
A “spec script” means a screenplay you write on your own, not a studio assignment, that you then take out into the market and try to sell. Chewie wound up on The Black List, which is an annual ranking of the hottest spec scripts in town.
The film was written by two 27 year old scribes, Van Robichaux and Evan Susser. Unsurprisingly, being on the Black List got them agents, and a big studio assignment of writing the movie version of The Jetsons. Now word has it that Kyle Newman, the director of Fanboys, may be directing Chewie, which would be a great geek one-two punch on his resume.
The Hollywood Reporter tells us that for Chewie, Newman secured the rights to Peter Mayhew’s life, and Mayhew confirmed this in a tweet. There’s no word yet on what George Lucas thinks of all of this, Robichaux and Susser are reportedly hopeful he’ll like the script and take it in the right spirit, and here’s hoping he does, because Chewie has sounded like a fun idea for a movie since day one.
It’s been said the making of any movie is far more fascinating than what winds up on the screen, and Star Wars was not an easy film to make by any stretch of the imagination. Lucas was so fed up with the trials and tribulations of bringing his epic vision to the screen that he didn’t direct again for over twenty years.
Making any movie’s tough, but try to imagine what making Star Wars from the ground up must have been like with the FX technology we had then. Oh wait a minute, we didn’t have that technology then, that’s why Lucas started ILM.
Again, Chewie is the making of Star Wars from a unique and fun perspective, it’s a great idea for a comedy, but a dramatic movie about the making of Star Wars could be pretty cool one day too. Most Star Wars fans know what a tough slog it was, and here’s also hoping that along with a lot of laughs that Chewie will give people an insight into what goes into making a movie.
