With Star Wars: The Clone Wars only days away now, George Lucas is doing the rounds all over the place, explaining this and that, and providing the press with a stream of quotes and information. The latest piece of news concerns why Lucas hasn’t brought back the actors who portrayed the characters in the Star Wars prequels.
The only actors returning to voice their corresponding characters are Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu), Christopher Lee (Count Dooku), and Anthony Daniels (C-3P0). But characters like Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Yoda are going to have completely new actors behind them. Why?
“To be very honest with you, I don’t really think I need to hire a big movie star to publicize my movie. I don’t need Angelina Jolie here. That’s what it comes down to in the end. They have two days in the studio and then they have like two weeks doing press. They are mainly paid for the press stuff.”
Apparently, even if Lucas wanted the actors to return (and pay them lots of money), it wouldn’t be easy to gather them up to make the commitment to the animated feature or to the subsequent television spin-off.
“You need people available every week. [Also] you can’t really afford multi-million dollar actors to do a television series. Those guys make more during their coffee break.”
And I am in complete agreement with Lucas about not need the actors for The Clone Wars. He isn’t just pulling a fast-one after the fact; you simply don’t need the actors to come back. You can pretty much always find someone who can do a decent Yoda impersonation; R2-D2 “¦ ; and no one liked Hayden Christensen anyway. The only real missing link is Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan, and I hope that by the end of the movie, I’ll be over that.
[Source: MTV]
I got used to it by the end of the original Clone Wars cartoon… hopefully this is just as good
Comment by Schutzenegger — August 11, 2008 @ 10:59 pm
looks like George Lucas finally got to make (or a least approve of) a whole Star Wars movie after his love for CGI, looks fun though
Comment by media boy — August 12, 2008 @ 2:19 pm