Let’s not lose our heads over the lack of Episode VII news this summer

Don't lose your head!

For all intents and purposes, convention season is now over for Star Wars fans. At least, con season in the sense of expecting big announcements.

In all honesty, it’s a bit of a relief. There are no more obvious ‘deadlines.’ News could break at any time, and it probably will. But I fully expect that John Williams returning will remain the biggest officially sanctioned news of the summer… And let’s not forget the rumors will only get bigger from here – just look at the Ian McDiarmid one we got last night.

Is it frustrating that we didn’t get any further announcements at Celebration Europe and D23? Yes, of course. But as Bleeding Cool points out, they don’t owe us anything at this point. They’ll tell us something when they’re ready to tell us something, and not a moment before. As Pablo Hidalgo said in our comments yesterday:

There are no casting ‘secrets’. If someone hasn’t been signed, they haven’t been cast. That’s what triggers an announcement. That’s why everyone who has been announced has been announced when they were.

That’s why these things emerge as ‘rumors’ first – because Lucasfilm can’t say anything until the ink is dry. So the rumors aren’t going away, and yes, some of them will be complete bullshit because that’s the way the game is played. That’s our lot, if we’re going to be following the films this closely.

I know this is a fandom of mighty whiners, but can we please, please, please just learn already to be patient for official news and confirmations? We have years of this roller coaster ahead of us, and the hand-wringing act is already getting old. I pretty much guarantee you that the folks in charge know far more about making a film than any of us do; We don’t need to ‘worry’ about them under the guise of wanting things revealed.

It’s not wrong to want things; we all want official casting confirmations. We’ve all got carried away at one point or another. Everyone in geek media is starved for more: Actors simply saying that they’d like to be in Episode VII regularly make headlines; last night’s Ian McDiarmid rumor is making the rounds today. But we have to stop demanding. Lucasfilm and Disney owe us a movie sometime in 2015 and that’s about it. I assure you they want this thing made just as much as we want to see it, and when the time comes to promote it, they will do so. But it’s not quite that time yet, so: Patience.

It’s still early, after all, and I’m sure we’ll get yet another rumor – crazy or not – before the end of the month in any case.

10 Replies to “Let’s not lose our heads over the lack of Episode VII news this summer”

  1. I think waiting for random surprise news is half the fun. Plus, on some level I have an intuition that keeping things close may be a good sign creatively. So yeah. :)

  2. Hell, they don’t really OWE us a movie in 2015 if it’s not going to be ready in 2015. I still am convinced the release date will slip, and I’m perfectly fine with that.

  3. Where on the net have fans been ‘losing their heads’ over a lack of Episode VII news? I’ve missed it…

  4. So a few mostly-American fans got a bit annoyed that there was no unlikely & massive announcement at a convention with plenty of other things to focus on… and a few more fans echo chambered the non-news on Twitter?

    Non story.

    If the fans who are supposedly up in arms focused on the actual news from beyond the shores of the USA, namely Germany, they might have less to be fraught about.

    1. They did nail that point pretty hard, and I think the location-based stuff may be reaching a bit, but it was a lot of people just plain pissed off, because this was the last ‘official’ con of the season for SW.

      And are you seriously trying making me defend this? You may have missed it, but it was there, and is all over many of the various reports from this weekend.

Comments are closed.

%d bloggers like this: