The Boogeyman director Rob Savage says Disney objected to a lightsaber being used in the film

A character in director Rob Savage’s Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman was supposed to have a lightsaber, but Disney vetoed that idea

Vivien Lyra Blair played a child version of the iconic Star Wars character Princess Leia Organa in the six episode Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi, and now she has a prominent role in the Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman, which reaches theatres tomorrow, June 2nd. You shouldn’t expect to see Blair wielding a lightsaber in the film – but during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, director Rob Savage revealed that her character did carry a lightsaber around in the script… but Star Wars owners Disney (which also owns 20th Century Studios, the company that made The Boogeyman) didn’t want them to put a lightsaber in the movie.

Answering a question about the moon ball that Blair’s character actually has in the movie, Savage said, “It’s a real thing that you can buy from Amazon. So we bought a few of them, cracked them open and put a light inside that we could control and dial up and down. But the interesting thing about that, especially with the Princess Leia of it all, was that in the original script, she had a toy lightsaber instead of a moon ball that she would hold close to her in bed. That is what I used to sleep with as a kid, and the whole idea was that it was a knockoff lightsaber that started to fritz out when the creature was near and eventually shattered. And Disney, in all fairness, didn’t want an image in the movie of young Princess Leia with a shitty knockoff lightsaber fritzing out in her hand. So they said no and that we had to come up with something else, and so me and the production team desperately searched for kids’ toys that glow. And then we found this moon ball that we thought would be a great prop, and so we rewrote the scenes, which ended up being some of the scariest, best scenes in the movie.“

The filmmakers were clearly happy with the moon ball replacement, as it has been featured in promotional materials.

The Boogeyman was originally heading for a release through the Hulu streaming service, but it scored so well at a test screening that the decision was made to give it a theatrical release. The film centers on a 16-year-old and her younger sister, still reeling from the death of their mother, as they’re targeted by a supernatural boogeyman, after their psychologist father has an encounter with a desperate patient in their house.

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place) wrote the initial draft of the script for The Boogeyman, which was then rewritten by Akela Cooper (Malignant) and more recently Mark Heyman (Black Swan). King has said the work those writers put into the script resulted in a “terrific screenplay”. Despite the fact that it’s quite different from the source material, a short story that appeared in the pages of King’s Night Shift collection.

The film stars Chris Messina (Sharp Objects), Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets), Marin Ireland (The Umbrella Academy), Vivien Lyra Blair (Bird Box), Madison Hu (Voyagers), and David Dastmalchian (The Suicide Squad).

The Boogeyman was produced by Shawn Levy, Dan Levine, and Dan Cohen of 21 Laps Entertainment, the company behind Stranger Things. Beck, Woods, and Emily Morris serve as executive producers. The movie has officially been rated PG-13 for terror, violent content, teen drug use, and some strong language.

The film was recently screened at the CinemaCon event, and you can check out some of the social media reactions to that screening at THIS LINK. You can also read a review by JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray HERE.

Will you be watching the lightsaber-less The Boogeyman in theatres this weekend? Let us know by leaving a comment below.