Get it? Cuz they're old now... —

An Old Hope: Lucas says Hamill, Fisher, and Ford set for Star Wars VII

Luke, Leia, and Han to squeeze in an appearance between shuffleboard games.

An Old Hope: Lucas says Hamill, Fisher, and Ford set for Star Wars VII

Break out the Imperial Walkers with the tennis balls on their feet (joke credit: Lee Hutchinson), because old-timers Mark "Luke Skywalker" Hamill, Carrie "Princess Leia" Fisher, and Harrison "Han Solo" Ford appear set to reprise their roles in the upcoming JJ Abrams-directed seventh episode of the Star Wars film franchise.

Speaking to Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine, series creator George Lucas said the three actors were already all but signed on for the movie before he sold the franchise to Disney for $4 billion.

"We had already signed Mark and Carrie and Harrison, or we were pretty much in final stages of negotiation," Lucas said. "So I called them to say, 'Look, this is what’s going on.'"

After blurting all that out, Lucas reportedly tried to walk back the statement in advance of an official announcement. "Maybe I'm not supposed to say that," he said. "I think they want to announce that with some big whoop-de-do, but we were negotiating with them. I won’t say whether the negotiations were successful or not."

Nice try, Lucas. You can't unring a fanboy bell that big that easily.

While the news is surely exciting for long-time fans of the original trilogy, the core cast members aren't as young and virile as they were back in the late '70s and early '80s. Fisher is 56 years old, Hamill will be 62 in September, and Ford is already in his 70s. All three stars have kept active in the business into their autumn years, though: Fisher recently appeared as a disembodied voice in Dishonored (among other roles), Hamill has become a wide-ranging voice actor whose roles include The Joker in many Batman-related projects, and Ford is currently filming the upcoming Ender's Game movie (not to mention his role in the fourth Indiana Jones movie... because we'd really rather not mention it).

It's also unclear whether the original cast members will play an integral role in the film or simply stand in as cameos connecting the new movie to its predecessors. Either way, it seems pretty clear that Disney is trying to make sure that all nostalgia circuits are go for their first entry into this venerable franchise.

Channel Ars Technica