George Lucas’ Original Star Wars Screenplay Gets Dark Horse Comics Adaptation
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Popular science fiction has loads of unmade projects in its history, but few have the Holy Grail status of George Lucas’ original version of Star Wars, which has long been archived away and seemingly lost to non-Lucas eyes, at least until a future successor needed to make a quick buck. Luckily it never came to that, and we have an upcoming project on par with J.J. Abrams’ Episode VII in terms of fan-riffic anticipation.
Comics giant Dark Horse has acquired the rights to George Lucas’ 1974 rough draft screenplay, entitled The Star Wars! Writer and LucasBooks executive editor J.W. Rinzler was one of the driving forces behind securing the script, and he’ll be working with artist Mike Mayhew to bring Lucas’ words to their illustrated life. Rinzler talks about the experience in the press release:
While researching in the Lucasfilm Archives I’ve found many treasures—but one which truly astounded me was George’s rough draft for The Star Wars. His first complete imaginings were hallucinating to read—mind blowing. While working with George on another book project, I once asked if we could adapt his rough draft. He was hesitant. Years later, with Dark Horse’s invaluable help, we showed him a few drawn and colored pages of what it might look like. He gave us the okay.
Proving this project differs from the original by more than just an article and a punctuation mark, it is described as “a tale of fantastic adventures, daring escapes, ‘lazer swords,’ romance, and monsters.” Well, that wasn’t so different. Oh, there’s more.
“A story of Jedi Annikin Starkiller and General Luke Skywalker, an alien named Han Solo, and evil Sith Knights.” Now we’re getting somewhere. If there’s anything this world needs, it’s another version of Han Solo, and thankfully the question of Harrison Ford’s age doesn’t come into it, as he’ll be both an alien and a bunch of drawings instead of a real person. Also, there’s no word on the percentage of incest that will be included.
The series will make its starkilling debut in September, and fans can begin their in-depth theorizing to their hearts’ content. If there’s no Chewbacca, I’m going to be mad. Just rrrrrr-ghghging.
You can check out some WonderCon images of Starkiller and a very different Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker below, via Bleeding Cool.
