Talking About 'Star Wars' Lore: Was Coruscant intended to appear in the original trilogy of Star Wars?

Was Coruscant intended to appear in the original trilogy of Star Wars?

No.

According to various sources, including Laurent Bouzerau’s The Star Wars Trilogy: The Annotated Screenplays, and the director’s audio commentary on the DVD and Blu-ray releases of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, depicting a city planet such as Coruscant on screen at the time (1977–1983) was beyond the ability of Industrial Light and Magic to pull off. It would have required extensive (and expensive) miniature work to create even a portion of the ecumenopolis which, at the time of Return of the Jedi, was tentatively named Had Abbedon.

In an early draft of Return of the Jedi, George Lucas tried to come up with a way to show the Imperial capital, but none of the techniques needed to pull it off (matte paintings and miniatures) would have rendered a city planet in a photorealistic way, which is what Star Wars fans were accustomed to by the early 1980s. (This, by the way, was the draft in which the Empire was said to be building two new Death Stars instead of just the one at Endor. This concept, too, was discarded.)

So, even though Lucas at one point hoped to show the Imperial capital world (the name “Coruscant” would not be adopted officially until 1991), he realized it would require new special effects methods to create, and those would not be around for another half-decade or so.