‘Willow’: Warwick Davis and Jon Kasdan Discuss How ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ Paved the Way for Franchise’s Return
Warwick Davis and Jon Kasdan revealed how the Willow sequel series came to be, speaking at a media screening for the first two episodes in London.
Actor Warwick Davis, who plays the eponymous Willow, revealed that he’d been keeping the secret that the franchise was coming back for a few years, and was delighted to finally share it with everyone.
It’s weird, you know, we’ve been holding this close to us for so many years now, not talking about it, and here we are today about to kind of unleash it to the world. It’s quite exciting and scary at the same time.
Writer Jon Kasdan, who co-wrote Solo: A Star Wars Story — in which Warwick Davis had a guest appearance reprising his role as Weazel from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace — revealed that it was their work on that film that paved the way for Willow‘s return. When asked to confirm that link, he simply replied: “It was indeed”, mentioning that he approached Davis to gauge the actor’s interest before anyone else.
Davis added a bit more flavor to the story. He spoke about how the film has gained a bit of a cult following since its initial release in 1988, and that there has been increasing clamor for a sequel over the years since its release, joking about getting recognized in the street and getting off a few playful zingers at George Lucas, who wrote the story for the original film.
I mean yeah, there’s so much love in the world for Willow, and years ago I went to George Lucas and Ron Howard and said “Guys, do you realize how many people want to see a sequel to Willow?” And they said “Yeah, we had kinda heard a few people mentioning it.” I said “what are you gonna do about it?” and they said “Eh, I don’t know…”
You know, George is very reserved about these things. He thinks in dollars instead of, like, creatively, most of the time! He said “I don’t think it’s the right time, right now”, and as Jon has mentioned, on Solo everything came together, the stars aligned, and here we are, it all happened.
Of course, all Willow fans want to know whether or not the series will be good. You can read our early reactions on Twitter, but Kasdan had a poetic line about what to expect from the Willow series after explaining his favorite quote from the film:
The one that’s most relevant to life and I think perfectly captures the spirit of Willow, is “Forget the bird, follow the river”. That’s the spirit of the movie and the spirit of what we did. We, uh, we followed the river.
We can all “follow the river” ourselves when Willow debuts on Disney Plus on November 30. We were invited to the event ourselves and will share our review of the first two episodes in the coming days. Stay tuned!
Josh is a huge a fan of Star Wars, superheroes and video games. He spends most of his time wondering who would win in a fight between Boba Fett and Star Lord.
