Disney told BOOGEYMAN director to remove a STAR WAR toy from the film

During the development of the film adaptation of Stephen King The boogeymanthere was a scene in the original script that featured a toy lightsaber from the Star Wars franchise. Disney Studios wasn’t a fan of the idea, so they told the director Rob Wild to remove it.

The story follows teenager Sadie Harper and her younger sister Sawyer, who are reeling from the recent death of their mother and don’t get much support from their father, Will, a therapist who is coping with his own grief. When a desperate patient shows up unexpectedly at their home seeking help, he leaves behind a terrifying supernatural entity that preys on families and feeds on the suffering of its victims.

Sawyer has a fear of the dark in the story, and to ease that fear he sleeps with a moon ball in his room, which is a glowing ball. Well, that lunar orb was originally supposed to be a toy lightsaber. But Sawyer is played by Vivien Lyra Blair in the film, the same young actress who played Princess Leia in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Speaking of the lunar sphere, Savage explained in an interview with THR:

“It’s a real thing that you can buy from Amazon. So we bought some, opened them up and put a light inside that we could control and dial up and down.

He then went on to talk about the plan for the toy lightsaber and explained why Disney told him to remove it from the story:

“But the interesting thing about all of that, especially with Princess Leia, was that in the original script, she had a toy lightsaber instead of a moonball that she would keep next to her in bed. This is what I used to sleep with as a kid, and the idea was that it was a knockoff lightsaber that would start to fall apart when the creature was near and eventually shatter. And Disney, in all honesty, didn’t want an image in the film of young Princess Leia with a shitty lightsaber sizzling in her hand. So they said no and that we had to come up with something else, so the production team and I were desperately looking for children’s toys that would sparkle. And then we found this moonball that we thought would make a great prop, and so we rewrote the scenes, which ended up being some of the scariest and best scenes in the movie.

I understand why Disney didn’t want the young actress to wield a toy lightsaber, but I don’t think it would have been a big deal. Disney is sometimes so weird with how elements of their big franchises are used in other movies.

Independently, The boogeyman it’s a great horror movie and the way the moonball was used made for some really creepy scenes. The movie is worth watching! Out this weekend!