In the mid-1980s, writer Bob Dolman was brought on board to work on the script for “Willow”.
“Star Wars” mastermind George Lucas had spent a long time trying to get the property going, before “Star Wars” even, but things didn’t get moving until filmmaker Ron Howard and then MGM came onboard.
Once Dolman joined after that, he and Lucas were very involved during the writing process. That proved to be a very different experience to Dolman’s time on the just launched “Willow” sequel TV series.
Speaking with THR about writing on the new series, Dolman says it had “more of a corporate feeling” than his experience on the original and indicates the studio maybe got a little too involved in the creative process:
“It felt that the studio was over our shoulder quite a bit – the studio being Disney and also Lucasfilm. They had good input; they had good notes. You have to move a series along, and you have to be involved in it. But I felt like we weren’t left alone enough just to toss ideas around and have the kind of freedom that I had when I was working with George and Ron.”
He says whilst he received lots of input from Lucas on the film’s script, he had the freedom to play with his own ideas on that:
“George was really hands-on, wanting to go page by page through each draft, talk about everything we were doing and then send me back to do another draft. [I prefer to] not be worried about whether or not an idea was good or bad, just trying things out and taking a chance and having the courage to even find a bad idea, knowing that it could lead to a good idea.”
Cut to decades later and that level of freedom in screenwriting isn’t around anymore – and not just because of the differing nature of film and television:
“There are a lot of voices, and some of them aren’t necessarily voices that know more than the people that have been hired. But those voices are heard, and notes are given. In the writing room of ‘Willow’ the TV series, there was constant input from other sources outside of the room. So it felt to me like we were never really alone in the room.”
Despite his misgivings, the new “Willow” is meeting a better reception than the original film. Ron Howard’s film clocks up just 53% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 47/100 on Metacritic whereas the new series is faring decidedly better with an 83% and 70/100 on the same outlets.
The new “Willow” sees Warwick Davis and Joanne Whalley reprise their roles in a new dark fantasy adventure as the character leads a new party to rescue a kidnapped twin.
Ellie Bamber, Ruby Cruz, Erin Kellyman, Tony Revolori, and Amar Chadha-Patel co-star in the series, which released the first two of eight episodes on November 30th.
