Monday, January 14, 2013

New Star Wars Film Based on Seven Samurai?

Disney, the new owners of the Star Wars franchise has apparently decided to base the new SW on Akira Korusawa's 1954 classic The Seven Samurai, the film that Star Wars creator George Lucas has said on many occasions his iconic space opera was formulated after.  However, director Zach Snyder has denied such reports.

Snyder in fact may still be true to his word about not directing Episode VII as the purported film will be a stand-alone feature and not directly related to the next trilogy in the works as promised by Disney.

Back in November, the Los Angeles Times reported that Man of Steel and 300 director Zack Snyder said he had no interest in directing the hotly anticipated seventh Star Wars film. But Vulture has learned that while this may be specifically true — he won’t be doing Episode VII — it was a bit of misdirection: He is in fact developing a Star Wars project for Lucasfilm that is set within the series’ galaxy, though parallel to the next trilogy. It will be an as-yet-untitled Jedi epic loosely based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai, with the ronin and katana being replaced by the Force-wielding knights and their iconic lightsabers. 

It’s not clear just where Snyder’s untitled Jedi film would fall within the Star Wars chronology, but one insider expects it will not be considered part of the “numbered” episodes, but rather a stand-alone film set sometime post–Episode VI events, meaning the next phase of the franchise development is much broader than previously thought.