Star Wars isn’t the only George Lucas-created franchise coming to Disney Plus. If the latest rumors are true, a sequel to Willow, the Ron Howard-directed fantasy film starring Warwick Davis, might be headed to Disney’s upcoming streaming service, too.
Howard said he’s currently in “discussions” with Disney Plus and Lucasfilm regarding a Willow revival on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast, and says that the project will be a television show that picks up some time after the movie left off. If Willow goes to series, Howard expects star Davis to reprise his role as the titular Nelwyn, while Jon Kasdan, who co-wrote Howard’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, is already on board for scripting duties.
In fact, it sounds like Kasdan was instrumental to getting the project off the ground in the first place. “Jon Kasdan … kept hounding me about Willow the whole time we were shooting,” Howard says, “and also hounding Kathy Kennedy.” Howard claims that Kasdan “has … an inspired take on” the property, which will be more “intimate” than the feature film.
Willow debuted in 1988, and told the story of an aspiring sorcerer who must rescue his adopted child from a power-hungry queen. Lucas came up with the idea in 1972, before he made Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, and enlisted Davis, who played the Ewok Wicket, and Howard, who starred in Lucas’ American Graffiti, to help make the film a few years after wrapping Return of the Jedi.
A Willow sequel has been a popular topic of conversation for years. Lucas hired comic book writer Chris Claremont to pen a trilogy of Willow novels based on an outline by Lucas in the mid-’90s, while he told crowds at Star Wars Celebration that he was working on a Willow television show in 2005. Last year, Howard teased that a Willow follow-up might be coming, although that iteration sounds more like a feature film than a TV series.
If Willow does make its way to Disney Plus, it will join a long line of geek-friendly properties debuting on the service. Disney has already confirmed that Disney Plus will host two live-action Star Wars shows, The Mandalorian and a Rogue One spin-off starring Diego Luna, as well as a number of Marvel productions, many of which are even more interesting now that Avengers: Endgame has radically changed the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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