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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker script wound up on eBay after John Boyega partied and forgot about it

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker script wound up on eBay after John Boyega partied and forgot about it

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Take a lesson from the Avengers: Endgame playbook

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens promotional still (DISNEY/LUCASFILM)

There are few secrets in Hollywood as sacred as anything involving new Star Wars movies, which is why when an authentic Rise of Skywalker script ended up on eBay, people at Lucasfilm panicked.

Director J.J. Abrams told Entertainment Weekly that an anonymous actor left the script under his bed, a housekeeper found it, and gave it to someone who posted it for sale on eBay. A Disney employee saw it, and purchased the script before anyone else could. Though Abrams may have tried to keep the actor’s name anonymous, John Boyega, who plays Finn in the new trilogy, told Good Morning America it was his fault. The issue, Boyega said, is that he forgot the script was under his bed while partying with friends. Truly, who amongst us can fault him for that? May he without sin etc., etc., etc.

“I was moving apartments, and I left the script under my bed,” Boyega said. “I was like, ‘I will leave it under my bed and when I wake up the next morning, I will take it and then move.’ But then my boys came over and we started partying a little bit. The script, it just stayed there. And a few weeks after, this cleaner comes in, finds this script and puts it on eBay for like 65 pounds.”

That’s about $85, which tells us two things: the person who listed the script didn’t know the true value of the script, and Boyega’s mishap could have led to The Rise of Skywalker being ruined for a measly $85. Most people get in trouble for these kinds of things. The Rise of Skywalker costs hundreds of millions of dollars to make, market, and then release. The secrets held within are worth big dollars to the House of Mouse. Especially considering this is the final installment in the Skywalker Saga arc of the franchise.

“It was scary, I got calls from every official,” Boyega admitted, joking, “Even Mickey Mouse called me, ‘What did you do?’”

Imagine being yelled at by Mickey Mouse! It happened to the Jonas Brothers in an episode of South Park. Just to show how secretive Lucasfilm and Disney get about new Star Wars movies, here’s Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) on what it was like to film The Last Jedi, as told to Polygon in 2016:

You get your pages in the morning, and they take them from you as you walk so they can shred them before it somehow leaks. You have security lines you have to walk through, both to and from set. And, not to mention, you have to wear these big monk hoods to protect your costume from drones.

Lucasfilm and Disney are companies who will go to extreme lengths to protect anything from getting out; it’s not surprising that Boyega would catch some major flack for just leaving the script under his bed. Perhaps what’s most surprising is that Boyega — and the rest of the cast — were given full scripts. Look at Avengers: Endgame, another popular end to a long-running franchise, full of secrets Disney and Marvel Studios don’t want getting out.

Actors on set didn’t even get full scripts! The pages they did receive often contained fake dialogue just in case. Very few actors in the movie even knew what happened. Members of the cast were told that a crucial scene in the movie — Tony Stark’s funeral — was a wedding, and that’s why they were dressed in suits.

So, look: maybe it’s Boyega’s fault for leaving the script under his bed, partying, and forgetting about it. Arguably, this should act as a lesson to Lucasfilm and Disney that all scripts should come preloaded on a password-protected iPad, or only certain pages should be given at one time. These things happen.