Original Star Wars trilogy scribe Lawrence Kasdan reportedly attached to new trilogy, plus Simon Kinberg

That didn't take long: within one month, we got all of our screenwriters lined up for the new Disney-Lucasfilm Star Wars trilogy, and one of them is a pretty reliable man for the job. As we reported earlier, Michael Arndt will be taking Episode VII, and now it's being reported that Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg will take on Episodes VIII and IX, though it's unspecified who will take which script. If you recall, Kasdan wrote both Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and if I may make a wild prediction, I'm going to call the final episode for him. Let the veteran round out the new trilogy. Kinberg is also hardly a slouch, having written Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Sherlock Holmes, plus he's currently writing the sequel to X-Men: First Class, on which he was a producer. (In other words, experience in sci-fi/fantasy franchises.) Both Kasdan and Kinberg will also join Kathleen Kennedy as producers on both films.

All three of the new movies will be based on story notes from George Lucas, but will be written and directed by others. Probably the best thing for Star Wars that George Lucas could ever do at this point.

The Hollywood Reporter (and several other sites) seem to have this news all but confirmed. Disney-Lucasfilm have not offered a comment yet, except to say that they will make an official announcement on StarWars.com, where they confirmed Arndt's role. For the moment, that is still the most recent news item.

Photo credit: Collider

Sources: Lawrence Kasdan, Simon Kinberg Lock Deals to Write and Produce 'Star Wars' Installments [The Hollywood Reporter]

• [Steven Fordham]

  Now that Star Wars is under Disney’s umbrella, my personal fave for director for the next episode (and maybe the ones after that):
  Brad Bird

• [Florian Bösch]

  Thank you. Thank you so much. Actually, Disney owning Star Wars now might be one of the best things that ever happened to Star Wars. At least George is now no longer writing scripts and doing directing. It can only get better.

• [Douglas Rushkoff]

  “Probably the best thing for Star Wars that George Lucas could ever do at this point.” 

  I missed the background on this.   Does this mean that because the last movies weren’t so good, it would better for him to make room for others? 

  • [Eric Simmons]

    Yeah, the consensus seems to be that Lucas works better as an ‘idea’ guy, while letting others actually handle the writing of dialogue & wrangling of actors. That old chestnut.

    • [Brainspore]

      Particularly if we limit those “ideas” to the ones he came up with prior to the release of ROTJ.

      • [Donald Petersen]

        Yeah.  Just finding out that Lucas himself wrote the treatment for Episode 7 and outlines for 8 and 9 takes most of the starch outta my Star Wars stiffie.  The bad dialogue can be fixed by script doctors, and handling the actors is the director’s problem.  But the most boneheaded problems with the prequel trilogy occurred at a fundamental story level, and if Lucas has already formulated story outlines, he’s done 80% of the damage already.

        • [Brainspore]

          I may have misread the reports, but my impression was that the story notes they’re referring to WERE written way back in the day before Lucas started pissing all over his original work.

        • [Donald Petersen]

          I’d have no problem with that.  Somewhere I have an old issue of Bantha Tracks, the old fan club newsletter, wherein he mentioned there were twelve parts to The Adventures of Luke Skywalker.  If he’s dusting off old plot outlines from back then, I’d be interested to see them.  If the outlines stem from Expanded Universe storylines (particularly New Republic ones), I’m on board as well.

          If, however, we’re forced to endure plot shenanigans akin to “young Anakin Skywalker built C-3PO out of spare parts when all along we’d naturally assumed he was an off-the-rack protocol droid” in order to unnaturally tie the movies together, I’m gonna slap somebody.

• [Stuart]

  At the end of a 1980 Muppet Show (season 4 episode 17 according to the person who posted it to YouTube), the cast of Star Wars (well, some of the cast: Mark Hammill, C3PO, R2D2, Chewbacca) and the Muppets sing When You Wish Upon A Star as a Darth Vaderish Disney castle rises from the back of the stage.

  It’s at about 3:50 into this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSe2FD9Vn1k

  Sorry if this is a repeat, I just came across it today.

• [thissortofthing]

  “I’m going to call the final episode for him”, says Jamie. I’m going to call the final episode as not being the finale episode, ever again. Now that Disney has Star Wars, it will never end. I for one am not sure that’s a good thing, and I say that as a bona fide Star Wars fan.

  • [Adam L. Cox]

    Disney paid a lot of money for the Star Wars franchise, which means they won’t stop making Star Wars films until people stop watching them. To believe otherwise is being purposefully naive.

• [Jorpho]

  Sherlock Holmes and X-Men: First Class, sure, but Mr. and Mrs. Smith is one of the last things that comes to mind when I think “written”.

  • [Repurposed]

    He did a final write on Sherlock Holmes and produced X-Men: First Class.

    Things that he’s written include X-Men: The Last Stand and XXX: State of the Union.

    Looks like his pedigree is a bunch of lazy sequels and the occasional action vehicle that needed to be saved by better actors. Oh, and taking out David Goyer’s trash.

• [webstu]

  “Mysterious are the ways of the Force.” -Yoda

• [hsumen]

  Has everybody forgotten the steaming pile of dung that Kasdan’s “Silverado” is? Ouch.