Star Wars concept artist Ian McCaig recently spoke at the Art and Industry of Imagination conference. He spilled some beans on The Force Awakens:
- Lucas initially wanted nothing to do with VII, but in a short while after pre-production began, he decided he wanted to submit a script. He brought in Ian and another prequel artist (possibly Doug Chiang, I missed the name) to the Ranch to help him realize his concepts. The script was rejected outright, as a result of…
- Disney’s banishment of anything mildly prequel-related. Usage of prequel-only characters, environments etc were banned, as to not incur the fan base’s wrath.
- Disney execs were reluctant to include non-Caucasian characters. The new trio were all initially all Caucasian, but it was JJ’s favoring of Boyega that brought about VII’s multi-cultured character set.
- A number of initial script ideas teased Anakin/Vader’s force ghost’s involvement, and Ian presented an idea so titillating (even to prequel-haters) along these lines that he had the audience clapping.
- After being questioned by an audience member, he responded that he was unable to confirm nor deny if Lucas’ script had any influence or effect on the Arndt/Kasdan/Abrams script – but strongly implied to the positive.