Yesterday was Life Day, a canonically Wookiee holiday in the Galaxy Far, Far Away that has its origins in the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special.
To mark the Special's 45th anniversary, we finally have word on the release of A Disturbance in the Force, the behind-the-scenes documentary about the ill-fated Star Wars event that had its world premiere at this year's SXSW festival.
A Disturbance in the Force is set to be released on digital and Blu-ray on December 5, and will also play in select theaters across the U.S., U.K. and Australia ahead of its home entertainment launch.
George Lucas was convinced to develop a holiday-themed variety special after the massive success of the original Star Wars movie. The Special aired 45 years ago on CBS over Thanksgiving and gained approximately 13 million viewers... but that was the last anyone ever saw of it (until its recent Disney+ re-release).
How bad is it? Put it this way, even the most die-hard Star Wars fans who will defend the prequels with their very life and hail The Rise of Skywalker as a masterpiece have no choice but to admit that the Special is the lowest point of the iconic franchise.
Lucas famously attempted to bury the Special forever, but the doc includes quite a bit of footage from the campy one-off. Co-director Steve Kozak explained how they managed to get away with this during a recent interview with /Film.
"As you know, there are a lot of films that evaluate, comment on, critique arts and media, certain media. I don't know why there hadn't been a documentary, or even very little reported about the special, but I come from licensing, fair use, and I know that if you're conservative enough, which we very much were, you can use a decent amount of unlicensed footage to make your point."
"I think, to our credit and Jeremy's credit, we were very conservative," he continued. "There's not a ton of footage of the special in the doc. That's actually both for legal reasons, respect reasons of the ownership of it, for Lucas's perspective, and also for the fact that it's just hard to watch. I don't know if we had permission to use a ton of footage if we'd actually have used that much footage. You know what I mean?"
Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), who has always championed the Special as a misunderstood masterpiece (not really), shared his favourite thing about it via social media.
The behind-the-scenes story of the making of the infamous "The Star Wars Holiday Special," featuring interviews with Seth Green, Weird Al Yankovic, Paul Scheer, Donny Osmond, Gilbert Gottfried, Bonnie Burton, Bruce Vilanch and Steve Binder.