Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge was originally going to feature Mos Eisley spaceport

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, a 14-acre Star Wars-themed section of both Disneyland in California and Disney World in Florida, was originally meant to feature a recreation of the Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine, the place where Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi first meet Han Solo in A New Hope.

After years of planning, the Mos Eisley concept was scrapped, and the team decided instead to let visitors inhabit a less familiar location: the Black Spire Outpost on Batuu, with a pretty magnificent recreation of the Millenium Falcon parked where everyone can see it. But that won’t stop us thinking about what could have been. And now Dan Cockerell, the former vice-president of Disney World, has offered an insight into the original Tatooine idea when speaking to WDW Radio.

“We did it for a couple of years and we had the Indiana Jones theater, that was gonna be the heart of the Star Wars land,” Cockerell said. “That was gonna go away and we were gonna plug it right in there. The Mos Eisley cantina was gonna be right across from Star Tours. We had all kinds of great concepts with that and we had gotten way down the path on art drawings [but] we hadn’t gone into architectural drawings or anything.”

The Mos Eisley concept was put to the sword by Disney boss Bob Iger and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. According to them, the idea looked to the past rather than the future of the franchise. They wanted the park to inspire future generations, rather than create a sense of nostalgia. “‘We really should think about do we wanna build a Tatooine and build what all the 50-somethings remember what Star Wars is, or do we want to build something else, which is going to appeal to all the upcoming generations who are gonna know the new stories?’” Cockerell recalled.

That makes a kind of sense, but we’d still like to see what Cockerell and his team had planned. And one day, Cockerwell believes that images of his concept, at least, will be shown to the world. “I’m sure they’re sitting in a vault and I’m sure they’re gonna be shown someday about what that land would’ve looked like and what the attractions were gonna be.”

Surely one of the main attractions would have been the cantina, right? It would’ve been amazing to hear the famous cantina band play that song over, and over.

Cockerell does approve of the current Galaxy’s Edge, though. The goal for the design was to create something timeless that could exist anywhere in the Star Wars universe and doesn’t tie itself to a specific story arc. Obviously, Mos Eisley is tied to a very specific part of the Star Wars story.

“It really just wanted to be a planet that existed in the Star Wars universe, but didn’t have too much story associated with it, so that it could be a place where all the characters could visit,” Cockerell said. “You don’t want to build something and have it become outdated eventually or too quickly.”

For what it’s worth, I think the Mos Eisley spaceport idea was great, but I understand why they scrapped the plans to develop a park that felt a little more original.

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