Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (Leigh Brackett Draft)
Download Script
(aka Star Wars Sequel)
February 17, 1978 Draft by Leigh Brackett.
Synopsis: While Han Solo goes in search of his father-in-law who has political ties with Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker heads to the Bog Planet where he meets a Jedi named Minch, who teaches him the ways of the force.
Note: ScriptShadow has a good review of this script here.
Source: Scanned – Pages: 129 – Size: 4.5 MB – IMDb
Brackett worked on the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back. The movie won the Hugo Award in 1981. This script was a departure for Brackett, since until then, all of her science fiction had been in the form of novels and short stories.
The exact role which Brackett played in writing the script for Empire is the subject of some dispute. What is agreed on by all is that George Lucas asked Brackett to write the screenplay based on his story outline. It is also known that Brackett wrote a finished first draft which was delivered to Lucas shortly before Brackett’s death from cancer on March 18, 1978. Two drafts of a new screenplay were written by Lucas and, following the delivery of the screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark, turned over to Lawrence Kasdan for a new approach. Both Brackett and Kasdan (though not Lucas) were given credit for the final script.
Many reviewers believed that they could detect traces of Brackett’s influence in both the dialogue and the treatment of the space opera genre in Empire. However, Laurent Bouzereau, in his book Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays, states that Lucas disliked the direction of Brackett’s screenplay and discarded it. He then produced two screenplays before turning the results over to Kasdan, who did not work directly with Brackett’s script at all. It is speculation if Lucas’ assignment of credit to Brackett was a mere courtesy, a mark of respect for the work she had done during her illness, or a contractual obligation.[4] Support for this view comes from Stephen Haffner, owner of the press that printed Martian Quest: The Early Brackett, who has read Brackett’s script, and claims that—outside Lucas’ storyline—nothing of Brackett’s personal contributions survives in the finished movie.
Brackett’s screenplay has never been published. According to Haffner, it can be read at one of two locations: 1) the library of the Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico, but may not be copied or borrowed off-site; and 2) the archives at Lucasfilm, Ltd. in California.
And now it can be read here!
Info taken from the Leigh Brackett Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Brackett
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I just wanted to thank you for both your summary and, more importantly, sharing the script with everybody so people can make observations and enjoy it on their own.
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I'd always wondered what the script development process was like for Empire. Thanks for this. Would it be too much to ask for anybody to transcribe the handwritten notes? I can't make out too many of the words.