10. The Writer Of Toy Story 3 Got Kicked Off The Screenplay
A week after Disney announced both their acquisition of Lucasfilm and the upcoming Episode VII, they revealed that the task of crafting the screenplay for the film would be given to Michael Arndt, writer of (among other things) Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3. Hardly surprising, given that he'd helped the studio make a critical and financial smash with the latter film. It was understood that Arndt's treatment and initial drafts of the script focused on the children of Han Solo and Leia Organa, with the original cast featured in minor supporting roles. Apparently JJ Abrams and Disney didn't agree that this was the direction to go and the screenwriter was replaced by Lawrence Kasdan (who co-wrote The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) and Abrams himself, who have supposedly geared the story much more towards the trio from the original trilogy. Now, both Kasdan and Abrams are well-regarded screenwriters, but the latter has a tendency to wax a little nostalgic in his writing (see Super 8) and the former worked on the original trilogy, so the screenplay could well be more than a little deferential to the films that came before and not try to accomplish anything new in terms of storytelling. Certainly, some of the casting details that came out suggested that Episode VII would deal with father issues, which isn't exactly new ground for the series.
