UPDATED: Deadline Hollywood now reports that Arndt has actually penned a treatment for the next three Star Wars films.
Time for today’s Star Wars: Episode VII rumor! If you’ll remember way back to, oh, yesterday, we were last speculating about the latest maybe-candidate for the coveted directional gig for 2015′s other big blockbuster (to wit, that news held that Safety Not Guaranteed helmer Colin Trevorrow is now in the mix), but today’s scoop relates to another major element of the new film: who will actually write the thing.
Vulture reports that “informed sources” (no more of those uninformed sources ’round here!) have keyed them into a “leading candidate” for the screenwriting gig: Michael Arndt. Wait, who? No, you know him, trust us.
A “Pixar favorite,” Arndt’s first big production was Little Miss Sunshine which, no big deal, he won an Oscar for. Since then, he co-wrote Toy Story 3 (picking up an Oscar nomination on the way), helped adapt Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion, wrote The Hunger Games: Catching Fire with Simon Beaufoy, and penned scripts for both the Phineas and Ferb feature and the upcoming “Goes Inside the Mind” feature for Pixar. Arndt’s got multitudes in him, and that just might be our best bet for a strong Star Wars scribe. Even better? Vulture shares that Arndt is no less than a Star Wars expert, one who has even lectured about the films (and his admiration of their strong structure) on numerous occasions.
The outlet also reports that “Arndt has written a 40- to 50-page treatment for the film and is likely to be at least one of the writers when the Disney/Lucasfilm project begins shooting in 2014.” That treatment is also apparently bound for some big-time directors, including Brad Bird, Steven Spielberg, and J.J. Abrams. Of course, that doesn’t mean that those three are the top picks for the gig, but “Disney wants to make sure they’ve at least tried the biggest names.”
Sounds like they might be at least trying for the best name when it comes to a scribe.