JJ Abrams On The New Chewbacca, Episode 8 And That Daniel Craig Cameo
J Abrams hinted that the rumours suggesting Daniel Craig is in ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ are true, telling Yahoo:
“I will say that Daniel Craig is someone I admire enormously. He came to visit the set and all I will say about Daniel Craig is that I don’t know why in a million years he would ever want to be in ‘Star Wars’ movie, but if he would I think he’d do an amazing job!”
Sounds quite convincing to us. James Bond star Daniel Craig is rumoured to play a Stormtrooper, and we think you can clearly hear his voice in the film. Watch the full interview below:
He also told us that original trilogy actor Peter Mayhew, 71, who plays Chewbacca in the series, sat out the character’s action scenes and was replaced by Finnish actor Joonas Suotamo (below).
He said: “We had a wonderful guy, this Finnish actor who is twice as tall as I am, playing Chewbacca in many of the action scenes. They were both fantastic. There’s something about growing up 7 feet tall or more, 7’2” I think - that he had this love and respect and connection for this character of Chewie all his life. The fact that he got to play Chewie in so many scenes was a powerful thing for him but Peter was often there while Joonas was doing this, almost as a consultant.”
Suotamo is a former student of Penn State who (unsurprisingly) played basketball for the college between 2005-2008.
Abrams also said that Kenny Baker – the man inside R2-D2 – “only came onto set a couple of times”.
The director also discussed how some of his ideas will be incorporated into ‘Episodes 8’ and '9’, which will be directed by Rian Johnson (‘Looper’) and Colin Trevorrow (‘Jurassic World’).
He said: “There were things that we - at the very beginning of the process - were outlining and discovering and we just knew would be in ‘Episode 8’ or ‘9’. A couple of those were things I was so excited about getting to do, but realised early on that there was no way we could shove them into ‘Episode 7’. Then of course Rian Johnson came along and is incorporating some of these things very closely to what we were thinking about - and in other cases things that we would never have imagined.
“The ideas that we had about what preceded and what might follow [‘The Force Awakens’] were fairly enormous. We had to talk quite a bit about how we got here, about where we might go. That’s what ‘Episode 4’, the first ‘Star Wars’ movie did so brilliantly. It felt like it had this lived in world that excited and was going somewhere extraordinary.“
‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ is in cinemas now.
Read more:
5 Things Hollywood Can Learn From The Force Awakens
Harrison Ford: I Want Nothing To Do With Young Han Solo Movie
