''It's a gorgeous place. I feel very, very lucky to be able to get it on film.''
Tourism Ireland launched today phase three of its latest Star Wars campaign 'trilogy', targeting fans of the science fiction franchise around the world.
The campaign involves a specially-commissioned 'behind-the-scenes' film, created during the filming of The Last Jedi in Ireland back in 2015 and 2016.
Tourism Ireland commissioned Lucasfilm – the company which produced Star Wars: The Last Jedi – to create the short film, in which Star Wars director Rian Johnson and actors Mark Hamill and Daisy Ridley praise the country of Ireland and the island of Skellig Michael.
In the behind-the-scenes film, Hamill praises Ireland's beauty: ''It's like a fairy-tale world – you just can't believe your eyes.''
Describing Ireland, director Rian Johnson said: ''It's a gorgeous place. I feel very, very lucky to be able to get it on film.''
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdYD-dNzjdI&t=1s
“We are extremely grateful to Lucasfilm and the Star Wars team for their tremendous generosity in agreeing to make this wonderful behind-the-scenes film, to help us promote the Wild Atlantic Way and Ireland,”said Niall Gibbons, CEO of Tourism Ireland.
Since its release, Star Wars: The Last Jedihas been breaking box office records everywhere and Tourism Ireland is capitalising on this positive exposure, highlighting the Star Wars connection with Ireland and bringing the magnificent scenery of the Wild Atlantic Way to the attention of millions of people everywhere.
Filming on Skellig Michael for Star Wars: The Last Jedi took place over two days in 2015, before moving to the mainland. To continue filming on location here, the crew returned in 2016 and built replicas of Skellig Michael’s sixth-century monastic ‘beehive’ huts on the mainland.
The location scouts were so taken with Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way that locations in counties Cork, Kerry, Clare and Donegal were handpicked to represent the planet Ahch-to in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Phase one of Tourism Ireland’s Star Wars
campaign ‘trilogy’ was unveiled in early December, in advance the film’s global release, with
phase two of the campaign, featuring Mark Hamill – aka Luke Skywalker, released earlier this month.
