Attempts to figure out who will direct the upcoming Star Wars Episode VII have largely been dead ends, with rumors falling apart and more directors taking themselves out of the running than actually expressing interest. So with Lucasfilm still playing those cards very much close to the vest, why not pursue something a bit easier to figure out: who will write it?
OK, yes, we already know that Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine writer Michael Arndt will handle the scripting duties for Episode VII, but the news is not just that there will be another Star Wars movie, but that there will be three. Couldn't they potentially be putting together the entire trilogy right now to get the movies made as quickly as possible? And wouldn't even a writer as talented as Arndt need some help making that happen?
That seems to be the theory, at least, behind the new rumor at Deadline, where they're hearing that Disney has approached both Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg to write scripts for the subsequent Star Wars sequels. Kasdan's name will be familiar to Star Wars die-hards, since he wrote the scripts for both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and also wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark for Spielberg and Lucas. Kinberg is a writer whose career took off more recently but is experienced with the same kind of huge blockbusters, having written X-Men: First Class and Sherlock Holmes, among others.
It makes sense that both of these writers would be brought in, though I wonder why they wouldn't have tried to get Kasdan on board for the first film too. The question is, why is this happening already? Do they really want three writers toiling away simultaneously on the trilogy, without even knowing how the first film will turn out? These are all talented writers, but there's a story about too many cooks in the kitchen that comes to mind at moments like this. Who knows at this point when we'll get anything confirmed about the future Star Wars films, but with the first one due in 2015, they don't have a whole lot more time to keep us all in the dark.
