The Force Awakens nearly blew up a classic Star Wars planet

Star Wars: Episode VII– The Force Awakens nearly involved one of the hit sci-fi franchise’s best-known planets meet an explosive end.

That’s according to Lucasfilm Story Group executive Pablo Hidalgo, who shared a detail about the film’s production on social media.

In The Force Awakens (2015) – the first Disney-produced Star Wars film to be released following the company’s high-profile takeover of the franchise – the villainous First Order have created a weapon capable of destroying multiple planets at once, known as Starkiller Base.

To demonstrate the weapon’s power, the First Order is shown using the cannon to destroy the planet Hosnian Prime.

However, while this was not a planet familiar to most Star Wars fans, it turns out that some of the film’s creators had argued for a far more devastating blow.

As claimed in Hidalgo’s tweets, some of the forces behind the film’s creation had argued for the Starkiller Base to instead blow up Coruscant.

Coruscant is the urban hub planet from the prequel trilogy that housed, among other things, the Jedi Temple.

“The concept art resembles Coruscant because for a time it was,” wrote Hidalgo.

“But that planet had the potential to be featured in something else in development so it was changed to a different location.”