George Lucas to reshoot Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in a single take

George Lucas’ latest plan to reimagine the heritage of the Star Wars universe is to tap into the oner zeitgeist and shoot a new version of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in one continuous take.

Following the huge success of Adolescence and the great reception given to Episode 2 of The Studio, The Oner, George Lucas is apparently planning to reshoot the original Star Wars adventure, Episode IV: A New Hope, in a single take.

According to reports, the production will lean into some of the latest developments in LED volumes that allow a circular stage to rotate elements in and out the foreground rapidly. The Unreal Engine generated background can, of course, be switched in an instant. 

Such is the complexity of Episode IV though that even that doesn’t seem to be enough for Lucas. So that the entire movie can be shot continuously without any whip pans or other cheats, two state-of-the art LED volumes will be built next to each other connected by physical sets. As the camera and the actors transition out of one volume, that can then be reset to the next scene but one. The space between the two volumes can be used for either scenes which have a greater reliance on physical sets, such as the cantina on Mos Eisley, or to maintain some of the cut scene elements of the narrative without having to dramatically reorder the script.

These physical sets will be built on rails so they can be quickly switched as needed, and some new characters such as Liar of Pol and Askew Fen are apparently in development to help ease some of the transitions. However, the project still represents a serious challenge.

“Some of the timings of this are brutal,” says an insider working on the production plans. “We're going to have to have a relay of extremely fit camera operators to make this work, and we're still figuring out how we can accelerate C3PO and R2D2's movements to be able to get them from scene to scene. As for Han Solo, he's going to have to do the Kessel Run in 8 parsecs just to keep up!"

Update: Seeing as it's going to be April 2 in many parts of the world soon, we should perhaps point out now that Liar of Pol and Askew Fen are both anagrams...