Lucasfilm's Willow Series Did Not Feel The 'Burden' Of Staying True To The Sequel Novels [Exclusive]
If you're a fan of fantasy film novelizations, this news may not be for you: the new Disney+ "Willow" series is set to debut this week, and it turns out it won't be hewing too closely to the trilogy of books that continued the story of Elora Danan throughout the '90s. /Film's Bryan Young spoke with showrunner Jon Kasdan about the series continuation of Ron Howard's 1988 movie, and Kasdan explained the interesting relationship the books have to the film, and the ways in which the series will "stay faithful" to them without treating them as gospel.
Kasdan tells /Film he spoke with Lucasfilm lore advisor Pablo Hidalgo when the "Willow" series was still in early development, saying, "Listen, let's talk about the 'Shadow Wars' novels and how they figure in the canon." He says Hidalgo then explained the books' rather unorthodox history. According to Kasdan, Hidalgo says author Chris Claremont already had the trilogy that would eventually become "Shadow Moon," "Shadow Dawn," and "Shadow Star" in the works "previously to coming to Lucasfilm."
Though Kasdan doesn't say this outright, it sounds like the books from Claremont, who was already an established Marvel comic book writer at the time, may not have originally been planned as Elora Danan-centric "Willow" tie-ins at all. Once the author partnered with George Lucas, though, he says, that's what they became. "There was an opportunity at Lucasfilm to publish fantasy," Kasdan says. "It felt like, with some very minor alterations, it could fit as a continuation of the 'Willow' story, but the sort of fantasy that George and Chris were sitting in a room hashing out where Elora's story would go is exactly that — a fantasy."
The novels 'expanded the story in meaningful ways'
This isn't the first time Kasdan has mentioned that the tie-in novels might not have been intended as "Willow" books from the beginning. At a Q&A and screening about the series attended by /Film, he shared that Claremont "just wanted to write some fantasy novels and they were looking for a publishing entity," and that Claremont and Lucas decided changes could be made to "make them sequels to the movie." The three books feature an older Elora as well as demons, dragons, and a villain called The Deceiver. They didn't exactly take the world by storm upon their release, and it doesn't sound like they're the blueprint for the upcoming series.
"[Hidalgo] relieved me of the burden of feeling like I needed to be beholden to those novels," Kasdan tells /Film. "At that point, I felt like we weren't. But beyond that one thing, we tried to stay very faithful to everything that was written around 'Willow.'" Kasdan cites works he and his team were able to use for reference, including the novels, cut elements of the original movie, and Allen Varney and Eric Goldberg's RPG guide "The Willow Sourcebook," which he calls "a wealth of great trivia and world-building."
"We treated all that very seriously and we needed to be loyal to those elements of the story," Kasdan says, acknowledging that the novelizations "expanded the story in meaningful ways." The "Willow" novels had their fans, but if they have a loyal audience that will only enjoy the new series if it faithfully follows their storyline, I haven't come across them yet. Kasdan's plan seems like a good one: respect what came before while building something new. We'll see how it turns out when "Willow" premieres on Disney+ on November 30, 2022.