A Star Wars script left in a London flat by Harrison Ford has been sold at an auction for £10,795.
The fourth draft of the screenplay for the first Star Wars movie, originally titled The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, had an estimated selling price of £8,000-£12,000 and was bought on Saturday by an Austrian private collector.
The script, dated 15 March 1976, was used by Ford and then left in a London flat that he was renting while he filmed at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire.
It is incomplete and unbound, with different-coloured pages indicating revisions, and includes scenes and characters that were cut from the final edit.
On page 56, Ford is introduced as the cynical hero Han Solo in the George Lucas script, according to Excalibur Auctions in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire. Alongside the script, Ford left other items including shooting schedules, a call sheet and collections of notes, which sold in a bundle to a UK buyer for £4,826.
These sheets of paper included a handwritten note that appeared to refer to a meeting between Ford and the British producer Robert Watts.
Watts and Ford would go on to work on 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1983’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Ford shot to fame after starring as Solo in George Lucas’s 1977 science fiction epic. He appeared in the original movie’s sequels, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), before reprising the role for The Force Awakens in 2015.
The Star Wars creator Lucas and the director Steven Spielberg would also cast Ford as archaeologist Indiana Jones.
The items had been tucked away for nearly 50 years in a private home in Notting Hill, London. The owners had rented out the top two floors to Ford, and co-stars Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia, and Mark Hamill, who starred as Luke Skywalker, visited him during his stay.
Excalibur Auctions’ auctioneer Jonathan Torode said: “The sale saw competitive bidding from around the globe for these never-before-seen pieces of Star Wars history.
“Although other copies of this script have come to market previously, this sale saw a new record set for a Star Walker script, which shows how a personal link to the items is so enticing to Star Wars fans.
“The personal provenance makes them totally unique. We hope they will be as treasured by their new owners as much as they were by the previous ones.”
All figures include the buyer’s premium.