Carrie Fisher’s death to force changes to Star Wars movies

The tragic death of Princess Leia will force the final Star Wars movie to be either rewritten or rely on a CGI character to finish the story.

THE tragic death of Carrie Fisher will force the producers of Star Wars to either make a major change to the storyline — or resurrect her through CGI.

Fisher had finished shooting her scenes as General Leia Organa (she has dropped the Princess title in this new trilogy) for the next Star Wars movie, the untitled Star Wars VIII, which is officially in post-production.

Carrie Fisher’s death is a heartache for fans and a headache for producers.

Director Rian Johnson told Twitter back in July that filming was over. It was originally slated to hit cinemas in the northern hemisphere summer blockbuster season, although that was pushed back to December 2017.

Filming for Star Wars IX isn’t due to start until 2018, with a release date of December 2019.

It had previously been speculated that Star Wars VIII will see Fisher given a much larger role. She was not on screen for much of The Force Awakens but its pivotal plot point — the death of her husband Han Solo at the hands of her son Kylo Ren — was to put her much closer to the action in Star Wars VIII.

This leaves Disney, the owners of the Star Wars franchise, with a real dilemma for Star Wars IX.

Fisher was expected to return as Leia, although IMDB has only Mark Hamill listed as confirmed for the final movie.

Do they rewrite Star Wars VIII and IX to kill off Princess Leia? Or do they go all Rogue One and bring her back as a CGI character?

Rogue One resurrected long-dead Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin — and threw in an old scene of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia for good measure.

Princess Leia appeared in Rogue One thanks to CGI ... will she also appear in the final Star Wars due to the same method?

That was done with mixed success but, given that Leia is being set up to be the leader of the galaxy (the rest of them were killed by the First Order in The Force Awakens), her CGI character would need to be on screen for a big chunk of the final movie.

Neither option is going to please fans, leaving Disney with a headache to match the fans’ heartache.

But at least there will be one positive in all this for the film’s accountants.

It is going to be difficult to increase the hype around a new Star Wars movie but Fisher’s death is likely to have a similar effect to the one that the death of Heath Ledger had on The Dark Knight — a huge movie was turned into a box office monster.