Chewbacca has made the cover of Vanity Fair.

Celebrated photographer Annie Leibovitz has snapped Harrison Ford as Han Solo, Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca, new recruits Daisy Ridley as Rey and John Boyega as Finn – with the droid BB-8 behind them.

JJ Abrams, the director of Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens, said that Harrison “was excited to get back in those shoes again, which was really interesting because I thought he hadn’t been a fan. I kept hearing those rumours when I was a kid,” he told the magazine.

Abrams said of the actor: “There was a fire in his eyes that you see in the movie.”

And he had one specific direction for the star: “I knew that he had done in some movies a kind of more growly thing, and I didn’t want Han to be growly.”

He also told the mag that he’s thought about killing off Jar Jar Binks.

“I have a thought about putting Jar Jar Binks’s bones in the desert there. I’m serious! Only three people will notice, but they’ll love it.”

He said of walking on to the Millennium Falcon: “To be on it, it’s insane. There were people who literally cried when they walked onto that set. It’s a strange thing, the effect it has.”

Leibovitz travelled to the film’s set and photographed characters played by Adam Driver, Gwendoline Christie, and Lupita Nyong’o in the hotly anticipated movie, due to open later this year.