Once again, here with are with a new batch of Star Wars rumors and these have to do with the casting and the potential release date. We just reported on TGD that JJ Abrams and producer Kathleen Kennedy are trying to get an extension on finishing the movie and getting a 2016 release date, but apparently Disney is insisting the next Star Wars must come out in 2015.
Giant Freakin Robot and other web sources are reporting that there will be open auditions for the net Star Wars film, and in fact, a number of sites have been posting casting notices that sure as hell seem like they’re for Star Wars. An actor who’s over 7 feet tall? Sounds like they’re looking for a Wookie to us.
A tweet from a Dutch Disney exec read: “Saw today some awsome [sic] first features/plans of new StarWars 7 movie coming end 2015.” This could mean that perhaps Disney will budge a little on JJ Abrams asking for an extension, and move the movie to the end of ’15 instead of the summer. “At this moment is it planned for end of CY15,” this executive added, via Twitter. “But in the entertainment business you will never know. Might be some changes there.”
Gary Kurtz, who produced the original Star Wars, told The Guardian that having open auditions for the next Star Wars film “makes sense. When we cast the original Star Wars film, all three of the main leads were pretty much unknown. We made a summary for an open casting call and that went out to every actor’s agent and actor’s school we knew.”
As Kurtz recalled, he believed Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher came in on the third day of auditions. Lucas didn’t want anyone from American Graffiti, so it took some convincing before he finally realized that Harrison Ford was right for Han Solo. (Can you believe Tommy Lee Jones and Sly Stallone were also being looked at for Solo?)
“I imagine the producers and casting directors for Episode VII will be holding open auditions for the same reasons we did,” Kurtz continued. “It’s always difficult to see the actor in the part until they are there in front of you doing it. Doing open auditions makes sense to me. Some of the more recent films they cast star names. I think they never bothered to test them with other people, and sometimes when you do that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of chemistry on the screen.”
