IT WAS A TIME OF MAGIC, A TIME OF muscle-bound barbarians, of dragons named Vermithrax Pejorative, and of kinky demons who sound a lot like Dr Frank-N-Furter. But as the 1980s came to an end, Hollywood was starting to lose interest in swords, sorcery and high fantasy in general.
Then, in what would be one of screen fantasy’s last gasps until Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, a film emerged from the mind of Star Wars godhead George Lucas, a film that wielded enough power to shape the imagination of one particular eight-year-old boy. In fact, the story of an unlikely hero playing protector to a magical baby would stay with that boy for the next three decades.
“Willow was one of the formative experiences I have of going to a movie theatre,” admits Jonathan Kasdan, writer and showrunner on Disney+’s new Willow TV show. “In the ILM documentary Light & Magic [directed, coincidentally, by Jonathan’s dad Lawrence, writer of The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders Of The Lost Ark] there’s a great section where all these filmmakers talk about how formative seeing Star Wars for the first time was.
“I always felt like I missed out on that a little, but for me was that moment. So when the property was sitting there, possibly available to be worked with, I was pretty aggressive about trying to get hold
