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Published May 02, 2016
"Star Wars" creator George Lucas has come up with a new fairy tale for the whole family, the animated musical adventure “Strange Magic.” Lucas and voice actor Elijah Kelley talked to FOX411 about the project, and we asked Lucas his thoughts on the upcoming “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
FOX411: Where did the inspiration come from for “Strange Magic”?
George Lucas: The inspiration came to me a long time ago, about 15 years ago. I have two daughters and I’d made “Star Wars” for 12 year old boys and I decided well maybe I’ll make a film for 12 year old girls. So I started working on it and I was doing other things at the same time but I decided that I would just keep plugging away on this thing and that’s really what the inspiration was. I wanted to do, where “Star Wars” was more mythologically oriented, this was more fairy tale oriented, but at the same time I wanted to basically have fun. I like music, I love working with music, so the idea of maybe trying to make a movie where the story is told in music, but existing music, fascinated me. I’ve been in this world before between “American Graffiti” and also “Labyrinth” and “Willow” and things where, you know, musical fairy tales, I love them, and I just wanted to see if I could make one where we all know the music but the words tell the story.
FOX411: Elijah, in terms of the music, what got you rocking out in the voice booth?
Elijah Kelley: The experience in the booth is, number one, it’s a workout because you can’t play a character like Sunny and not be over the top and not be boisterous and just not be energized. There were a lot of times where I left the booth, like, sweating because it was so active and the music element was something that brought me home. I grew up singing in church, I’ve done musicals, I’ve done musical theater before so that was, I won’t say it’s a piece of cake, but it felt like home.
FOX411: The new “Star Wars” -- what do you know about it?
Lucas: I don’t know anything. I’m going to be surprised. A great feeling for me is that I always used to say I never got to see “Star Wars,” that’s my one regret. I never got to be wowed by the ship coming over and now I’m going to be. So now I get to be surprised like everybody else.
FOX411: When you approach something like “Strange Magic,” which is a new world you created, do you always look at it as creating a world, not just a movie?
Lucas: Well you have to create a world. That’s part of it. I enjoy that part of it which is why my movies have a lot of fantasy in them. Just because it’s fun and I like to create that stuff.
Kelley: Your process is really ridiculous though, if you think about all the movies that you do, like the worlds that you create, it pretty much makes the movie an… easier story to tell. This universe you created with this is just like spot on.
Lucas: Well this universe is something that in theory could be in your backyard. Especially the sets and everything are very photorealistic and so the idea is you could go out in your backyard and you might find these characters and they obviously look like butterflies and they look like bugs and they look like things… if you use your imagination a little bit you can imagine that this actually exists.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/george-lucas-strange-magic-is-star-wars-for-12-year-old-girls