The late actress was going to reprise her role as Princess Leia in more Star Wars movies.
Disney may be able to use its movie insurance to receive financial confirmation for Carrie Fisher’s untimely death. The celebrity was on contract with the company to complete three movies in the Star Wars franchise but had completed only two of those films
Reports have suggested that the insurance payout for this tragedy could be as much as $50 million.
Disney owns the Star Wars franchise and had already filmed two of the three films that remained with Carrie Fisher’s character, Princess Leia. She was reprising her role from the original trilogy of the series and was on contract for one more. The company purchased insurance coverage in order to protect itself against an event that could cause Fisher to be unable to fulfill her contract obligations.
As a result the December 27th death of Carrie Fisher could mean Disney will claim on the movie insurance.
Carrie Fisher suffered a heart attack while on a flight only a handful of days beforehand. Though her fans were sending her messages of hope and prayer, she passed away two days after Christmas. Tragically, her mother, celebrity Debbie Reynolds, with whom Fisher was very close, suffered a fatal stroke the next day.
Fisher had already starred in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. She will also be in Episode VIII of the franchise. That film had already completed filming. However, she was also supposed to play Leia in Episode IX, a movie that had not yet started filming.
Disney has not yet announced how it intends to address the presence of Leia in Episode IX. While the technology does exist for digital recreation of actors who are not present to reprise their roles or to recreate scenes of actors as their younger selves, this may not be the case for the unfinished Star Wars movie.
“We’re not planning on doing this digital re-creation extensively from now on,” said ILM chief creative officer, John Knoll.
At the time of the writing of this article, Disney had not immediately responded to a request for comment about the movie insurance claim.
