When it comes to legendary actors in the Star Wars franchise, there are plenty of people who will come out with names like Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, or Carrie Fisher, but there is no one bigger in the Star Wars universe than Anthony Daniels, the veteran of 45 years in the franchise who has appeared in every live-action Star Wars movie from 1977’s Star Wars through to Solo: A Star Wars Story. In all but the last of these, Daniels played the protocol droid C-3PO, the robot character inspired by the 1927 German movie, Metropolis. Now Daniels is returning to the franchise once again, having announced his involvement in an upcoming project.

Although it seems hard to imagine anyone else now playing the role of Threepio, the alternative name given to the character in the series, George Lucas had originally planned on having cartoon icon Mel Blanc provide an American voice for the droid, but following Daniels’ audition for the role quickly changed his mind. As well as appearing in eleven live-action movies, Daniels has also voiced Threepio in The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels and Star Wars Resistance, as well as other video games, specials and documentaries.

Giving a pretty undeniable hint of what he is up to, Daniels shared a photo of himself in a motion capture suit at Ealing Studios, London, on his Instagram account, with the caption “Finally, a new suit – that fits!.” The actor included the hashtags #c3po, #starwars and #iamc3po, leaving it in do doubt that he is clearly getting ready to bring Threepio back to the screen once again, although the use of the mo-cap technology would suggest that this could possibly be a CGI-version of the droid, which could tie into the new Disney+-bound A Droid Story.

Anthony Daniels Will Play C-3PO Again In A Droid Story

While there are several Star Wars related movies and series in production at the moment, with the likes of Andor, Ahoska and season three of The Mandalorian currently in some stage of production, unless Daniels’ latest work is to be used in a new video game linked to the franchise, then the most likely place he is going to turn up is in the new animated special, A Droid Story, which was announced formally in December 2020 and will introduce “a new hero, guided by legendary duo R2-D2 and C-3PO.”

The use of the motion capture suit does seem to be something of a relief for Daniels, who has been inside the iconic gold suit for all of his live-action movie outings, other than The Phantom Menace when his character was still a work in progress piece of machinery without his metallic skin. While there are a lot of reasons why even a live-action appearance for C-3PO could make use of motion-capture and CGI, it seems very unlikely that after so many years championing the use of practical effects – except notably when it comes to the majority of Hutt appearances in the franchise – C-3PO would be rendered in computer graphics for a considerable role unless it is in a completely animated project.