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There's big news in Star Wars fandom: it seems the first-draft script of The Empire Strikes Back has been circulating online for over a month now. (Another timely Mojo news item!)

A history lesson is in order: Shortly after the colossal success of the original Star Wars, George Lucas hired noted pulp SF novel author and Hollywood screenwriter Leigh Brackett to write the script for Empire. She duly turned in a first draft, but sadly died of cancer before she could make any revisions.

Without a co-author, Lucas wrote the next couple of drafts himself, before handing his drafts over to Lawrence Kasdan (the man who also wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark and would go on to script Return of the Jedi) for a polish. But it seems that during the period after Brackett's death, Lucas made some major changes to the story of Empire.

Brackett's script would have created an entirely different series from the Star Wars saga we know today. Most notably, the draft envisions a world where Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker are two separate people: Luke meets his father's Force ghost while training as a Jedi knight, and then goes on to duel Vader in Cloud City.

Also, Luke has a twin sister who is referred to--but it's not Leia. Instead a girl named "Nellith" is said to have been separated from Luke at birth. Although spoken of, she is never actually seen in the film, setting up a plot thread for future sequels.

(I guess old George really was making it up as he went along.)

The script is available here. Do note that the site is experiencing heavy traffic at the moment, and is periodically shutting itself down to recuperate. So it may be a while before you can access the download page. Nonetheless, you'll likely want to download it before the Lucas Legal lawyers pounce.

EDIT: Mojo now has its own mirror of the script, just in case.

Source: Cinematical

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Alternate news title: Star Wars Battlefront 3 cancelled AGAIN. This time in development at Slant Six, developers of SOCOM Confrontation, this announcement was accompanied by a round of "temporary" layoffs.

In a clear case of déjà vu, LucasArts have put the Star Wars project "on ice". Although that has indeed happened to every version of Battlefront 3 so far, that's not even the hang-on-hasn't-this-happened-before part. As the reason behind this is that they wanted the game out this year and the team couldn't deliver. Now where have we heard that before?

Interestingly though, the reason LucasArts couldn't release it in 2011 is that their Star Wars schedule is "stacked" that year. Methinks there's more than just Lego Star Wars III and TFU2 incoming from the House of George.

Source: Kotaku

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The 1996 shooter Star Wars: Dark Forces will soon be available on the Playstation 3 and Playstation Portable consoles -- no official announcement has been made, but the game has been rated on both consoles by the ESRB.

It is assumed that Dark Forces will be available for digital download, as it already is for PC users on Steam. The estimated price is one piece of eight, or two pieces of four. Either way, it'll be cheap.

(Thanks to clone 2727 for the tip).

Source: Destructoid

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