Star Wars 9: Big CHANGE revealed by Mark Hamill as JJ Abrams combats leaks and spoilers

The star plays Luke Skywalker in the franchise, and will be returning for Episode 9 in 2019 – presumably as a Force Ghost, or in a flashback; given the fact he appeared to die at the end of The Last Jedi. But with rewrites still to be shot and filming yet to be completed, Hamill has revealed in a new interview that he hasn’t even been given a paper copy of the script. With alleged leaks popping up online all the time, it seems writer-director JJ Abrams and Lucasfilm are more keen than ever to keep everything under wraps.

Recalling his experience of making the first Star Wars in 1977, he told Entertainment Weekly: “I remember back when I read the first Star Wars [script], I was like, ‘Wow, that’s the goofiest thing I’ve ever read.’

“I gave it to my best friend to read, and I said, ‘What do you think of it?’ He said, ‘It’s really wild, it’s crazy, can I give it to Meredith?’ ‘Sure, go ahead.’

“It went around to all my friends. Of course back then nobody cared.

“Nowadays it’s like working for some secret deep state government organization, like being in the CIA.

“They’re going to send [Episode 9] rewrites over to Prague on this dark red paper that gives you a headache to read.”

He elaborated: “They’re going to fly [the rewrites] over with somebody from the company.

“They’re going to come and give it to me and wait for me to read it before I give it back. So no pressure!

“You can’t even keep it overnight. But that’s the way it is now.”

The actor said he much prefers having physical printed scripts – but that’s just not the way things work on a property as big as this.

“I like to make notes, little cartoon drawings in the margins to help me visualize it… whatever you have to do to help remember it,” he revealed.

“You can’t do that in electronic form, it’s so impersonal. I’m old school and long for the days of paper scripts.

“They wound up letting me keep a script when we were doing [The Last Jedi], but I had to lock it up in a safe every night and then carry it with me and never let it out of my sight. And I can understand why — if [a script] gets out it ruins it for everyone.”

A first teaser trailer for the as-yet-untitled Episode 9 is expected to be released before Christmas, according to widespread reports – but this has yet to be confirmed.

It’s been a rocky year for Star Wars, with Solo performing below expectations at the box office and future spin-offs seemingly being put on the back-burner.

But with two live-action TV series in the works, as well as Episode 9, it seems there’s a lot of life in the franchise yet.

Star Wars: Episode 9 is out in December 2019.