Actor Sam Witwer is a real Star Wars fan himself. Witwer is the voice of Star Wars’ Starkiller in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed video game and also the voice of The Son and Darth Maul in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. When the subject the future of Star Wars came up in his Q&A session at this month’s Sci-Fi Expo, Witwer revealed some insider information regarding George Lucas’ intentions for the franchise. Witwer explained that Lucasfilm’s sale to Disney last October really meant that George Lucas “gave Star Wars to the world:”
“Star Wars has always been independent movies. You don’t think of them that way because the scale is so big but they are independent movies. They are independently financed. Little indie movies with budgets of $200 million! So the moment you hear it’s no longer going to be an independent thing there’s a great deal of fear and apprehension.
But when you think about it, the two choices were [Lucas] just locks up the rights and throws away the key and we never get Star Wars again and this is a universe where Clone Wars has proven that you can do any kind of a movie inside of that structure. What, he’s just going to let it die? That doesn’t make sense. So if you’re going to leave it to someone, who are you going to leave it with? Paramount? Twentieth Century Fox? They are great companies but it’s a crapshoot. Who knows what they would do with it. The only company in terms of its charter and its priorities that actually made sense is Disney. These guys actually do have a reputation for shepherding certain franchises, for keeping certain characters and situations special. Look at the way they treat their animation legacy. So if they treat Star Wars like that, we’re in good shape. If they get reckless and don’t respect it as much, then of course, we’re in trouble.
[Lucas] isn’t going to be around forever and this is his way of acknowledging that. Look, maybe I should say this, or maybe I shouldn’t. I was talking to Katie Lucas, George’s daughter, and she said to me, maybe a year ago, ‘When my dad’s gone, no more Star Wars. That’s it. That’s the way he wants it.’ It was probably in the middle of him engineering this deal. No one knew about this. So this was an act of generosity on his part. I’m sure that part of him is like ‘Well, it’s my thing and that’s that.’ But that’s not what he decided to do. He was giving [Star Wars] to the world so people can enjoy it for years to come. So, I think that’s cool.”
We’ve got more to come from Sam Witwer at the Sci-Fi Expo so stay tuned to SciFi Mafia!
Catch Sam as the vampire Aidan on Syfy’s Being Human, Mondays at 9/8C and as Darth Maul on Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Cartoon Network, Fridays at 8/7C.
