Disney strikes back at Star Wars script thief

The final ending to arguably the most influential saga in Hollywood history will be revealed when Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is released worldwide next month. But the plot might have been spoiled were it not for a vigilant Disney employee who spotted a genuine leaked script on eBay and snapped it up.

J J Abrams, the film’s director, has revealed that a complete script was stolen after one of the lead actors left their copy lying around.

That is not supposed to happen on any film, let alone one as gigantic and secretive as The Rise of Skywalker, which concludes the third of three trilogies extending the story first told in George Lucas’s 1977 movie.

Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker in the films, has described being forced to read his script in a locked room. Werner Herzog, the German film director who has an acting role in The Mandalorian, a Star Wars spinoff showing on Disney Plus, said that during filming he had to go to lunch wrapped in a cloak so that no-one could photograph his costume.

‘‘The security is insane,’’ Abrams said. ‘‘The company were really nervous about anything getting out. And so they had only a handful of scripts.

‘‘One of our actors, I’m not going to say which one – I want to, but I won’t . . . left it under their bed,’’ he said. ‘‘It was found by someone who was cleaning their place, and it was given to someone else who then went to sell it on eBay."

Daisy Ridley, who plays the film’s chief protagonist, Rey, has dropped a strong hint about who the careless star was.

Ridley told Good Morning America: ‘‘I’m not going to throw the person under the bus who it is, but there is someone else potentially coming on the show this week who can answer the question . . . It wasn’t me.’’ Her costar and fellow Brit John Boyega was due to appear on the show yesterday.