Empire Strikes Back co-screenwriter, Lawrence Kasdan, is reportedly working on a documentary series about George Lucas and ILM. ILM, short for Industrial Light and Magic, was founded in 1975 by George Lucas as a visual effects company to help bring Star Wars to life. Since then, the company has been one of the leading figures in visual effects technology having worked on all the Star Wars films as well as numerous other films like Forest Gump, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Jurassic Park, and many more.
Lawrence Kasdan has a long, storied history with George Lucas. Impressed with Kasdan's script for Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lucas brought him aboard to pen the script for The Empire Strikes Back shortly after the death of original screenwriter Leigh Brackett, with whom Kasdan shares a co-writing title on the film. Kasdan would return to pen the script for Return of the Jedi in 1983. When Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012, they brought Kasdan on to co-write the script for The Force Awakens alongside J.J. Abrams, and he also co-wrote Solo: A Star Wars Story alongside his son Jonathan Kasdan.
During an interview on Score: The Podcast, via Collider, composer James Newton Howard revealed that he just finished scoring a documentary that Lawrence Kasdan has been working on. Howard revealed the documentary will be a six-part series focusing on George Lucas and ILM. Howard has composed the score for all of Kasdan's directorial films since 1994's Wyatt Earp. No release date was given on the project or any details on how long Kasdan has been developing it.
Interestingly, Howard did not reveal if the project is produced by Disney or if they have any involvement in the project. ILM was one of the many assets that Disney acquired in the purchase from Lucasfilm in 2012. Disney could acquire the documentary and release it on Disney+ as it would fit their high-profile documentary series like The Imagineering Story or the upcoming Peter Jackson documentary series, The Beatles: Get Back. If Disney is not involved in the project and does not acquire it, it would be a high-profile documentary for any number of distributors that may be able to illuminate more on the recent developments at ILM since the Disney acquisition.
There's no word yet on if George Lucas himself will appear in the documentary for interviews. Lucas has stepped away much from the public spotlight since his sale of Lucasfilm to Disney. He has been mostly retired, spending time with his family and developing the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art which is under construction in Los Angeles. Lucas has also been critical of many aspects of the recent Star Wars films, including Lawrence Kasdan's own Star Wars: The Force Awakens, so one would imagine he would have plenty of fascinating things to say during the interview. The documentary will be a highly anticipated series for film fans and those interested in film history.
Source: Collider