After the tragic passing of actress Carrie Fisher late last year, Star Wars fans began to wonder how the character of General Leia would be handled in future film installments. After the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - which featured the digital likenesses of a young Fisher and the late Peter Cushing - would Lucasfilm attempt to recreate Fisher digitally for certain scenes, or maybe rewrite her story?
During a talk at the Scale: The Future of Tech and Entertainment conference this week, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that despite Fisher's death, nothing about her performance as Leia in Star Wars: The Last Jedi will be altered, either by cutting her performance or through digital additions. "When we bought Lucasfilm, we were going to make three films — Episodes VII, VIII and IX," said Iger. "We had to deal with tragedy at the end of 2016. Carrie appears throughout VIII. We are not changing VIII to deal with her passing. Her performance remains as it is in VIII. In Rogue One, we had some digital characters. We are not doing that with Carrie."
Iger also revealed at the conference that the still-untitled Han Solo movie will actually take place over the course of seven years, chronicling the future smuggler's years from age 18 to 24, and that we'll discover how the rogue "got his name", which is an interesting choice of words. Could Han Solo not be the character's original name, or is Iger just referring to him making a name for himself in the galaxy?
As for the future of the franchise, Iger said talks have commenced on where to take the saga after the culmination of the new trilogy. "We’re starting talk about what could happen after Episode IX. About what could be another decade-and-a-half of Star Wars stories."
What do you foresee in the future of Star Wars? Let us know in the comments!