Tip your rumour box into the fact drawer because George Lucas says that Star Wars originals Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford *will *be returning for the next instalment of the franchise. It's confirmation of Fisher's own hints and those of a rather more circumspect Hamill over the past few weeks and populates Episode VII with familiar and much-loved faces. Chewie, it's your move.
"We had already signed Mark and Carrie and Harrison - or we were pretty much in final stages of negotiation," Lucas told Bloomberg Businessweek. "So I called them to say, ‘Look, this is what’s going on.’ Maybe I’m not supposed to say that. I think they want to announce that with some big whoop-de-do, but we were negotiating with them." He added coyly, “I won’t say whether the negotiations were successful or not.”
It's not often we turn to our esteemed colleagues in the business press for movie news - although their understanding of trade treaties would have been handy on The Phantom Menace - but Michael Bloomberg's title got the scope in a long, wide-ranging chat with the movie mogul. Click here to read it in full.
So, awesome news or an rash attempt to recreate past glories with a creaking cast? And can an ageing Solo navigate the Kessel Run in anything under the standard 18 parsecs? Share your feelings in the usual place.