Lucasfilm Hopes Shawn Levy Will Work His Magic With 'Star Wars: Starfighter'
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While writer Calum Marsh was on the set of Star Wars: Starfighter, he got to see and report on the goings on of that set. Along with having a conversation with Shawn Levy. Levy, who has seen success with a slate of films since 2002, has become known as a reliable director. With a successful film for Marvel Studios released in Deadpool & Wolverine, the hope is there from Lucasfilm that he can do the same for Star Wars.
Levy knows that, as one of his strengths, as he revealed, “There is a breed of movie star and filmmaker that makes it a point of pride to spend all the time and all the money. As if your creative appetite is so voracious that cost and schedule be damned. But I’m the guy the studios call when they want someone they know will take their investment seriously and deliver responsibly. It’s not the sexiest way to put it. But I’m a good worker. And I do take pride in that.”
There was a time when Levy was just known for family comedies. Where nobody saw him as anyone but “the family comedy guy.” Such a label had him “deep-down worried that I would never get to direct other kinds of movies.” Kathleen Kennedy, who was on set at the time, acknowledged that label. “He did family comedies, and that got reinterpreted as ‘lightweight’ – which is completely unfair. It is so hard to do movies like that. It’s all I look for in directors, and it’s like a needle in a haystack.”
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Levy did his best to break out from that label, creating a production studio in 21 Laps and accepting projects that were unlike the family comedies he was known for. It is thanks to that he worked with the Duffer Brothers on Stranger Things as a producer, and even directed a few episodes. In working on these other projects, Levy found “it taught me what I can be as a filmmaker, which is far broader than just the family comedy guy who made Cheaper by the Dozen.”
There’s a connecting theme with Levy’s films of fathers and sons. The same story will be happening with Starfighter. When this theme was brought up as maybe being connected to his past, Levy became emotional, admitting that he never realised that such a theme was rooted in his own history. With his dad having left at a young age, both he and his sister were brought up by a mother who suffered depression and alcoholism. At 13, the siblings fled that home, reuniting with their dad. An act of courage that Levy says saved his life.
“I have never, ever connected it before. I’m a little embarrassed, because you’re going to have to mention that I got emotional. But I could never figure out why I kept coming back to these stories of a 13-year-old boy being saved by a man. There was something defining about that moment for me. And with Star Wars, I’m doing it again.” Levy stated his dad had never asked about that recurring theme, but that he would be told that night, “because it will mean everything to him.”
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Source: The New York Times
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