When Luke Skywalker Was Called Starkiller: Harrison Ford’s lost Star Wars script is for sale

A long, long time ago, and not in a galaxy far away, the “Jedi” who defeated the Empire was called Luke Starkiller, and not Skywalker, and his friend Han Solo, played by Harrison Fordhe forgot a script in a house in London which now sees the light transformed into a small treasure.

The original script of the first film of the Star Wars saga, used by Ford in 1976, was auctioned by decision of its owners, the owners of the house in Notting Hill (west of London) where the actor stayed during the shooting. .

It is a modest jewel, with a relatively low estimated value, between 8,000 and 12,000 pounds (9,400 and 14,000 euros), but for fans of the galactic odyssey it contains gold nuggets right from the first page: The adventures of Luke Starkiller, collected in ‘Diary of the Whills’it is the title of a text that he signs George Lucas.

At that time, the character he played Marco Hamill He didn’t even go by his final name, Luke Skywalker.

Exegetes of the saga claim that Lucas made the change to avoid misunderstandings with the infamous criminal Charles Manson (Starkiller means ‘the killer of stars’), who terrorized Hollywood in those years.

Hamill himself complained in 2015 through his social networks that when the film was still being shot in Tunisia and London, it was still called Luke Starkiller. “How sad,” he wrote on Twitter (now X).

The screenplay which will be auctioned by the specialist house Excalibur Auctions on 17 February is the fourth revised draft out of a total of five, dated 15 March 1976.

Although incomplete, it includes scenes and characters that would end up disappearing from the final cut.

Along with the text, other documents that Ford left in the British capital will also be auctioned, such as a letter from his agent Patricia McQueeney, full of humor and winks, in which she reproaches him for not having telephoned his then wife, Mary Marquadt. .

A summer in Notting Hill

Beyond the offering, there’s a personal story that connects Ford to the family who are now putting some of their forgotten possessions up for sale.

In the summer of 1976, Harrison Ford took his first steps into the world of cinema. He had had some small roles American graffitiby Lucas himself, or in The conversationby Francis Ford Coppola, “but no one knew what Star Wars he was about to convert,” Jonathan Torode, an expert on Excalibur, explains to EFE.

So when he rented the top two floors of a house in Elgin Crescent in Notting Hill to a couple who lived on the ground floor, they had no idea who their illustrious tenant was, Torode says.

The family immediately bonded with the actor and spent delightful summer evenings talking about films. However, a woman who worked as a domestic worker and who was even more of a movie fan got very scared when she recognized him in the house.

The owners remember him as an “excellent” tenant, very tidy and kind. According to Excalibur, the actor wanted to contribute his own money to buy new plants for the garden where they held their dinners.

His co-stars, such as Hamill and Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia, also stopped by the house, which Ford is estimated to have rented for six to eight months.

Now the owners of the things the stars left behind, surely unaware of the impact the film would have, have put them up for sale with the aim, Torode explains, of helping their grandchildren financially.