MOVIES: Jabba The Hutt Was A Human

The original script to A New Hope describes Jabba as a "fat, slug-like creature with eyes on extended feelers and a huge ugly mouth", but Lucas stated in an interview that the initial character he had in mind was much furrier and resembled a Wookiee. When filming the scene between Han Solo and Jabba in 1976, Lucas employed Northern Irish actor Declan Mulholland to stand-in for Jabba the Hutt, wearing a shaggy brown costume. Lucas planned to replace Mulholland in post-production with a stop-motion creature. The scene was meant to connect Star Wars to Return of the Jedi and explain why Han Solo was imprisoned at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. Nevertheless, Lucas decided to leave the scene out of the final film on account of budget and time constraints and because he felt that it did not enhance the film's plot. The scene remained in the novelization, comic book, and radio adaptations of the film.
When the film was re-released to theaters in 1997, George had the funding to do a computer-animated version of Jabba. It was never meant to have the giant slug in it, so when Han Solo walks around him, he steps up over his tail, because in the original he can just walk around the human. When it was released to DVD in 2004, they updated the CG to make it better.

Here is what Jabba looked like in the 1977 Marvel Star Wars comic book called Six Against The Galaxy.

Here is an interesting video of what it was like inside the Jabba puppet from Return Of The Jedi.

https://vimeo.com/189064731

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