'Star Wars' Casting: Luke Skywalker Needs a New Wing Man
by EG
Wedge Antilles was an accomplished starfighter pilot who helped the Rebel Alliance out of more than one tight spot in the original “Star Wars” trilogy. As the Alliance re-emerges and heads into battle in the upcoming “Star Wars: Episode VII,” it looks like Wedge is going to be AWOL.
Denis Lawson, the actor who played Wedge in the original trilogy, told an audience at a screening of a new movie he’s starring in that he had been offered a part in the new “Star Wars” film but that he’d turned it down.
“They asked me,” he said, “but it just would have bored me.”
Fortunately for fans of the original characters, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford weren’t bored by offers of parts in the new film, and they’ll all be on hand. So will Peter Mayhew and Anthony Daniels, who play Chewbacca and C3PO, respectively.
Wedge was a very minor character in the films, but he was much more prominent in the “expanded universe” stories written by fans after the films were released. Disney, however, announced recently that, as far as it’s concerned, the expanded universe officially doesn’t exist, so in the official “Star Wars” record books, Wedge is destined to be but a footnote.