One Of Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Biggest Leaks Was A Complete Accident

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Just over a decade before sequel trilogy nostalgia set in, production on 2015's "The Force Awakens" kicked the property's fandom into hype hyperdrive for the new trio of "Star Wars" films. They knew the original trilogy principals (Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford) were returning for a new "Star Wars" movie, so they, naturally, wondered who and what else would be returning. This meant Ye Olde Internet Rumor Mill would be churning like wild throughout the shoot. Fans would be staking out Pinewood Studios and turning up at locations hoping to hopefully snap a scoop of someone in costume or a familiar prop. I was the West Coast Editor of Ain't It Cool News at the time, and I was inundated with (mostly bogus) information. It was a free-for-all.

Given the intense scrutiny, it's amazing how much Lucasfilm and Disney were able to keep under wraps for as long as they did. Luke Skywalker's very minimal role in the movie was a surprise, as was Daisy Ridley's emergence as the sequel trilogy's new lead. (Han Solo's death, not so much.) At a certain level, the studio could anticipate the fandom incursion. But they couldn't prepare for accidental aerial photographs from a British aviation club member who, while on a leisure flight aboard an Ikarus C42 microlight airplane, inadvertently clicked a shot of the Millennium Falcon.

It should not have been a massive surprise that the Millennium Falcon would be making its first appearance in a live-action "Star Wars" movie since "Return of the Jedi." But the way the reveal trickled out into the news sphere must've come as a shock to Disney and Lucasfilm.

How a leisure pilot captured the scoop of the Millennium (Falcon)

When Matthew Myatt and his colleagues in the Airbourne Aviation Flying Club, based just outside of London at Popham Airfield, took to the skies on a random afternoon in 2014, he was looking to snap some pictures and generally enjoy a flying excursion. Then, as they flew toward a grassy area called Greenham Common, Myatt caught a glimpse of something out of the ordinary. So, he got out his camera and captured some shots of the strange object on the ground 1,000 feet below, which could not be made out by the naked eye.

Four days later, Myatt downloaded his photographs and, lo and behold, there was the Millennium Falcon.

Proud of his discovery, Myatt uploaded the picture to Twitter in the evening and went to bed. At sunrise, his phone started ringing and didn't stop for a while. The Sun was the first to call, followed closely by The Guardian. He'd not just got off a shot of the Falcon but also a black X-wing fighter. He checked his Twitter account and saw retweets numbering in the thousands. Every news outlet in the country was hitting him up. As he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014, "As the days went on, it got more and more crazy. 'Star Wars' almost wrecked my life for a couple of weeks. It was absolutely barmy." Barmy!

Lucasfilm reached out to Myatt, but he refused the studio's calls. He did, however, hope that the Falcon's pilot, Harrison Ford (a flying enthusiast himself), might pay a visit to the Popham Airfield. This evidently did not happen (which, given Ford's penchant for plane crashes, might've been a good thing), so all Myatt got for his shutterbug luck was a load of phone calls and retweets.