Newly published photographs of discarded production equipment appear to show that Star Wars: Episode VII has been shooting in the Forest of Dean.
The shots, published by the Daily Mail, were taken in Puzzlewood in the Gloucestershire forest, an area of lush, knotty woodlands which has been used to shoot BBC TV dramas Merlin, Dr Who and Atlantis. Reports last week suggested JJ Abrams and his team may have visited the area; now photographs of discarded cabling suggest the crew may have been and gone.
Disney, which bought all rights to the long-running space opera for $4.05bn (£2.3bn) in October 2012, has confirmed that Episode VII is shooting at Pinewood studios, London. Deserts scenes likely to be set on the iconic planet of Tatooine from the original trilogy are being filmed in Abu Dhabi.
Puzzlewood explicitly recalls scenes from 1983's Return of the Jedi on the forest moon of Endor, though those were filmed in northern California's redwood forests.
Disney announced last week that Episode VII would go on a two-week hiatus while Harrison Ford recovers from a broken leg sustained on set at Pinewood last month. Ford is due to return alongside Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher in the classic roles of Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia from the original Star Wars trilogy that hit cinemas between 1977 and 1983.
A swath of newcomers – from Attack the Block's John Boyega to Max von Sydow – were also confirmed in May for JJ Abrams' film, with two further names released last week. The film remains on course for a December 2015 release date.
So far the only confirmed report from the set of Episode VII has come from film-maker Kevin Smith, who enthused about a recent visit to Pinewood. "It was tactile, it wasn't a series of fucking green and blue screens in which later on digital characters would be added. It was there, it was happening," he said.
"I saw uniforms, I saw artillery that I haven't seen since I was a kid. I saw them shooting an actual sequence in a set that is real – I walked across the set, there were explosions – and it looked like a shot right out of a fucking Star Wars movie.
He continued: "[Abrams is] building a tactile world, a world you can touch. And he's replicating it with all the love of somebody that has the world's greatest collection of Star Wars figures."
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