George Lucas wanted a classic Daffy Duck cartoon to play before every screening of the original Star Wars in 1977, according to Mark Hamill on Twitter. Hamill is well-known for portraying Luke Skywalker in Star Wars episodes 4 through 9 and recently reprised his role as the Jedi for a cameo in the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian, though his digital de-aging was a point of contention. Hamill is also a prolific voice actor known for voicing the Joker in numerous animated DC series and games.
In recent years, Hamill has also become known for his presence on social media and specifically interacting with fans on Twitter. Recent highlights on Hamill's Twitter include him sharing a photo of the cast celebrating Alec Guinness's 62nd birthday on the set of the original Star Wars, which was retroactively titled, A New Hope in 1981. Hamill also recently addressed another photo taken on the set of the same film showing himself pointing Anakin's lightsaber directly at his face, which has become a popular meme. Hamill says the meme makes him "cringe" every time he sees it because he did not actually do it in the film.
Now, Hamill is sharing more behind-the-scenes Star Wars trivia on Twitter. In response to a tweet from MeTV's Toon In with Me, Hamill confirmed the rumor that George Lucas wanted a Daffy Duck cartoon to play before every screening of Star Wars in 1977. "It would've been an icebreaker to let the audience know what was coming was less than dead serious," Hamill said. He went on to explain that they could not get the rights to the cartoon, so the director's wishes were never fulfilled. See Hamill's tweet below:
Since Star Wars was distributed by 20th Century FOX and the Looney Tunes are owned by Warner Bros., getting the rights to show the short before the feature would have been too complicated. The specific cartoon in question is Duck Dodgers in the 24th-and-a-half Century. This classic Looney Tunes short is a parody of space adventures, so Lucas' desire to show it before Star Wars makes perfect sense, to perhaps set a tone.
Lucas' love of Chuck Jones' cartoons was actually what originally inspired him to get into filmmaking. Though many Star Wars fans take the intellectual property very seriously, it seems Lucas' original intent was to set a more light-hearted tone for the series based on his desire to include this specific cartoon and Hamill's "less than dead serious" comment. While Lucas' request never came to fruition, Hamill has now confirmed that the Star Wars rumor is true.
Source: Mark Hamill
