Disney Hands Star Wars: Episode VII to the Writer of Toy Story 3

| 10 Nov 2012 11:29

Academy Award winner Michael Arndt has been given the impossible task of producing a script as good as Episode One's.

It seems that after Disney scooped up Star Wars for about 4 billion (yeah, that's "billion" with a "b", by the way) and change, it didn't want to waste any time in churning out a profit. Imagine that! Thus, almost needless to say, Star Wars: Episode VII has hit its nascent pre-production phase, and already requires someone to start churning out dialog that we can only hope won't include the word "meesa." For this gargantuan task, Disney has chosen Michael Arndt, writer of indie comedy romp Little Miss Sunshine and, more recently, Toy Story 3.

The news comes direct from Star Wars' online HQ, where a series of video diaries featuring the film's producers are being released in tandem to their progress on cranking out the movie. Right now there's little more than footage of George "Alec Guinness Would Kick Me Between the Legs If He Was Still Alive" Lucas lurking around an office with the new dark lord of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy. We'll likely see meatier content once there's more to show.

No, still no word on who'll be directing this leviathan, but with the film in full swing, that news probably isn't too far far away. Lots of people have wondered about the new direction of Star Wars since Disney confirmed its production, and while the announcement of Arndt wrangling the wordy bits doesn't necessarily answer that question in full, the fact that he's most famous for writing a "kid's movie that won't bore adults" could point to the upcoming trilogy taking a similar tack to previous installments.

Still, we shouldn't forget that Michael Arndt is an Academy Award winner, with his first original screenplay out of the gate, Little Miss Sunshine, taking home a tiny golden man, and his second, Toy Story 3, warranting another invitation to the show. So before you get too worried about Mr. Arndt's pedigree, let me leave you with this little gem once spoken gratingly by a certain Hayden Christiansen: "I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth." Yes, folks, there is such a thing as rock bottom. It's all uphill from here.



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