As the world goes Star Wars crazy over the recent announcement that J.J. Abrams will be directing Star Wars Episode 7, Mark Hamill has revealed that Star Wars almost wasn’t called Star Wars. In a podcast interview with the Nerdist, Mark Hamill said, “They do all these studies, and they say ‘Well, women don’t like science fiction.’ In fact, they wanted to take the word ‘wars’ out of the title.”Mark Hamill continued, “Twentieth Century Fox, they had a name the movie contest, while we were shooting it, on the bulletin board. If you can come up with a name that was better than Star Wars, you know, because they had all these focus groups that say, ‘Well, 30% polled on that title think it’s a behind the scenes look at the Elisabeth Taylor/Richard Burton marriage.”In fact, Star Wars by itself wasn’t even the original title, Mark Hamill revealed, “The first time I ever read a script it was called, let’s see, ‘The Adventures of Luke Skywalker As Taken From The Journal Of The Whills Saga # I: The Star Wars,’ that was the title.”So why did the name Star Wars stick? Mark Hamill explained, “But the long and short of it was nobody came up with a title, because a lot of people tried, I tried, I can’t remember what I came up with, but nobody actually ever came up with a title they liked better than that.”
