Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford speak onstage during the 33rd AFI Life Achievement Award tribute to George Lucas at the Kodak Theatre on June 9, 2005 in Hollywood, |
"We had already signed Mark and Carrie and Harrison -- or we were pretty much in final stages of negotiation. So I called them to say, 'Look, this is what's going on,'" Lucas, 68, said of Disney buying Lucasfilm, and planning to release Star Wars: Episode VII in 2015.
"Maybe I'm not supposed to say that," he added. "I think they want to announce that with some big whoop-de-do, but we were negotiating with them."
Lucas teased, "I won't say whether the negotiations were successful or not."
The casting has yet to be confirmed by Disney and director J.J. Abrams, but Fisher, 56, and Hamill, 61, have hinted they will return.
"They're talking to us," Hamill told Entertainment Tonight in February. "George [Lucas] wanted to know whether we'd be interested. He did say that if we didn't want to do it, they wouldn't cast another actor in our parts -– they would write us out . . . I can tell you right away that we haven't signed any contracts. We're in the stage where they want us to go in and meet with Michael Arndt, who is the writer, and Kathleen Kennedy, who is going to run Lucasfilm. Both have had meetings set that were postponed -- on their end, not mine. They're more busy than I am."
In an interview with Palm Beach Illustrated, Fisher was asked whether she would reprise her role as Princess Leia. "Yes," she stated. She joked that Princess Leia today is "elderly . . . in an intergalactic old folks' home."
Her rep told CNN this week that "she was joking. Nothing has been announced."