Club Jade

It may not be coming to a theater near you anytime soon, but Attack of the Clones 3D will be heading to Germany for Celebration Europe II in July. Reed today announced that exclusive screenings of the converted film will be shown for ” an extremely limited engagement.”

They’ve also revealed the art show prints, which are now up for pre-order.

Other recent CEII news: Ashley Eckstein will be attending, and there will be a limited edition Her Universe dress and tee avaliable, as well as 200 of the Return of the Jedi necklaces.

StarWars.com has confirmed that the 3-D releases of Episodes II and III have been “postponed.” The entire statement is:

Lucasfilm has decided to postpone this fall’s scheduled release of Star Wars Episodes II and III in 3D. Given the recent development that we are moving forward with a new Star Wars trilogy, we will now focus 100 percent of our efforts on Star Wars: Episode VII in order to ensure the best possible experience for our fans. We will post further information about our 3D release plans at a later date.

While fans saw some of the scenes from Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith in 3D at Celebration VI, so far no work on converting the original trilogy to 3D had been announced. Will the focus on the sequel trilogy mean that plans for their 3D release are also “postponed” or do they factor into the hype for the sequels?

The story was first broken by Nikki Finke at Deadline.

I’d have a hard time getting worked up about this one. Sure, the scenes from AOTC at Celebration were neat, but just as a curiosity. I certainly would have liked to see the Original Trilogy in 3D next year, but perhaps Lucasfilm being cautious about flooding the market – and with a new movie in the pipeline, there’ll be more than enough press and interest in the franchise to go around.

Or, in other words: Congratulations, Spike TV! You enjoy the rights to those movies as long as Lucasfilm (and/or 20th Century Fox?) is contractually obligated to let you have them.

Revenge of the Sith 3D has a new release date, 20th Century Fox announced this week. Attack of the Clones is still set for its original date of September 20, 2013, but Revenge of the Sith has been moved up from October 11 to October 4, putting only two weeks between the rereleases.

AOTC will have some sisterly competition from The Little Mermaid 3D, which comes out only a week before, while ROTS will be facing Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and the Harrison Ford thriller Paranoia.

UPDATE: Lucasfilm has confirmed the date move.

Literally just announced at the Closing Ceremonies here at Celebration VI: Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith in 3D will be released mere weeks apart next year, and the second Celebration Europe will be held in Germany, also next year.

Attack of the Clones 3D will come out on September 20, 2013, followed by Revenge of the Sith 3D on October 11, 2013! Fans in the Closing Ceremonies got to see clips of both films.

Also announced is the second Celebration in Europe: It’ll be July 26-28, 2013 at the Messe Essen in Essen, Germany. I bet the Belgian modelmakers are relieved!

Ewan McGregor spoke to /Film about his latest movie, Salmon Fishing in Yemen, his Oscar-winning Beginners co-star Christopher Plummer, the upcoming Jack the Giant Killer and, of course, the prequels:

Well I like them. I mean I saw them when they came out and I haven’t seen them since, but I was happy to be in them. I felt that it was great to be part of that huge legend of STAR WARS and you know I never involve myself in the discussion about it or the criticism of them or not. They are what they are and fortunately to the moment they’ve re-released the first one and there’s a whole generation of kids now who weren’t around when we released them before. Children love them, regardless of what the die hard STAR WARS fans from the 70’s think, kids love them to bits and I’ve always really enjoyed that with my discussions with them, you know when people’s kids who I haven’t met before come up and they see Obi Wan Kenobi. They’ve always got nice questions to ask and stuff.

He hasn’t seen The Phantom Menace 3D due to filming on The Corrections, but he hopes to go soon – and “take my kids along.”

The Phantom Menace became the first Star Wars movie to cross the $1 billion mark at the box office Wednesday, only the 11th film to do so globally.

Rumor! Pocket Lint report that sources at the Panasonic conference in Hamburg are saying that The Phantom Menace 3D will be coming to Blu-ray in the spring.

Being Ackbar. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Peter Hartlaub catches up with Erik Bauersfeld, the radio dramatist who provided the voice of Admiral Ackbar and Bib Fortuna.

Sports. Sports Illustrated features Amanda Lucas. She claimed an open-weight women’s championship Saturday in Japan.

Honors. George Lucas accepted a Vanguard Award from Samuel L. Jackson at Saturday’s NAACP Image Awards. In his presentation, Jackson talking about lobbying for a role in the prequels: “I’ll be a Storm Trooper and just run across the screen. Nobody even has to know I’m in it.”

The Phantom Menace had a 65% drop at the box office this weekend, coming up at #6 with $7.9 million, but it did pass one very big milestone – the first Star Wars. The Phantom Menace is now beating the original in all-time domestic grosses. Will A New Hope earn back top placement when its 3D turn comes around? Stay tuned…

In the meantime, there’s a rumor going around that we may see Attack of the Clones 3D as soon as August. Curious…

The weekend box office estimates are in, and it looks like the 3D rerelease of Episode I came in with a respectable $23M. Fox isn’t saying anything about further Star Wars 3D rerelease plans yet, but I’d bet that we’ll be seeing Attack of the Clones this time next year.

As predicted, The Vow and the Denzel Washington/Ryan Reynolds thriller Safe House were the top movies this weekend with $41.7M and $39.3M respectively. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island came in #3 with $27.6M. Overall, theaters took in $190M this weekend, an almost 30% increase over this time last year.

So I’ve been out to the theaters now twice to see Star Wars: Episode I -The Phantom Menace 3D and what do I think? It had been a while since I had popped in this episode to watch at home, and seeing on the big screen in 3D with my friends and fellow Star Wars fans was the thing to do. I took in both a midnight show and a regular evening show on opening day, and got some popcorn and a great seat and enjoyed. Here’s are my thoughts on seeing The Phantom Menace in 3D.

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