Canadian college finds “original Star Wars script” that is probably fake, but nobody cares
Let’s all imagine a hypothetical scenario: You’re cleaning out your basement, and among the piles of useless family photos and spider eggs you find the actual Holy Grail. You pick it up, you drink some water out of it, you suddenly develop magical powers, and then you excitedly tell the world. People gather around, pat you on the back, and congratulate you on your cool discovery, but then Jesus shows up and tells you that it’s not the real Holy Grail. He says it looks exactly like the real one, but it’s simply a high-quality replica that isn’t even worth anything on eBay. You look to the audience that has gathered around you, and they all shrug their shoulders, indicating that they don’t care if it’s real. Would you throw it away, or would you proudly take another sip from it?
Based on this article from CBC News, The University Of New Brunswick in Saint John, Canada, would definitely do the latter. It didn’t find the Holy Grail, but it did find a supposed “original shooting script for Star Wars” in its library. A librarian named Kristian Brown who looks exactly like Stephen Merchant—that’s not relevant, but he totally does—was digging through the school’s “extensive science fiction collection” when he found what he described as “a unique looking item”: A script for Star Wars on blue paper, stamped with Lucasfilm logos, and dated March 15, 1976. Brown believes a previous librarian somehow acquired the script in the ‘90s and failed to mark it as important, allowing it to eventually get lost in a pile of zines and other crap.
However, there is a theory as to why nobody knew something so important—and valuable—was sitting in this college’s library: It’s not real. That theory, which we’re only calling a theory as a joke, came directly from Lucasfilm itself, which says that the script is most likely a “fan-made” replica that was sold at a convention of some kind.
This should take all of the wind out of this story’s sails—because who cares about finding a copy of a famous thing?—but, as in our Holy Grail scenario, nobody seems to care that this script is almost certainly not real. The CBC article even had to issue a correction about the script’s authenticity, but everyone involved was apparently so excited about finding a thing that they assumed was historically significant that they’re not letting the fact that it isn’t bring them down. That ‘90s librarian is probably pissed that he lost his sci-fi convention merch, though.