Jonathan Hales, who co-wrote Episode II's screenplay with George Lucas, spoke to a packed hall at Celebration II about what it was like to collaborate on the script, along with what brought him to such a gem in his career.

Perhaps the most illuminating thing that came of the talk was Hales detailing the story credit: "I worked with Lucas, it was both of us from the beginning, two people talking in a room at Skywalker Ranch about this story." From there Hales produced a story treatment. In the interim between that and work on the first draft of the script, new ideas came into being that made their way into the story. Hales was given a great deal of freedom to create - which he described as treating with great reverence - while Lucas had finaly review oversight of the script: "it's not that George owns the ball, he owns the stadium as well," Hales said. Of his contributions to the script, he is greatly proud but there are "a few regrets", including his describing the Jedi Library as being "shelves of books stretching into infinity." While ILM designers omitted the books, Hales lamented that "we are a book culture. This is what we have. I'm a very great believer in books." That the Jedi would still have (and use) manuscript pages thousands of years old held a romantic allure for Hales. Other things came out remarkably well: "I like Dexter Jettster. He's a very funny character. I like Jango as well." Hales came to meet Lucas and producer Rick McCallum when work began on "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles". He comes from a previous background in theatrical and television writing. Writing for Star Wars "has been unlike anything I've ever done," he said... but was confident that we've an incredible tale that he and Lucas have crafted in Episode II.