Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
George Lucas is among those who will receive Kennedy Center Honors this year, it was announced today. Other honorees include Cicely Tyson, Rita Moreno, Carole King and the Eagles. They’ll be celebrated at the Center’s annual gala on December 6 in a ceremony that will air on CBS December 29th.
Before that, however, Disney will name Lucas a Disney Legend at D23 in August.
Lucasfilm and ILM today announced that they’ve formed the ILM Experience Lab (ILMxLab) to create “immersive content” – aka virtual reality and such. Coming one day to a theme park or gaming console near you, probably!
If that doesn’t do it for you, there’s also a new George Lucas interview.
Vanity Fair isn’t the only magazine borrowing some Star Wars mojo this month. Wired today has ‘the definitive oral history of ILM,’ with George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg, Dennis Muren and more. (Including J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson.)
Mary Franklin in the news. Alaska Dispatch profiles our favorite Celebration organizer, with shoutouts to the Star Ladies, Bossk, and Sex with a Rodian.
Kathleen Kennedy says a new Indiana Jones movie is in the cards… One day. “When it will happen, I’m not quite sure,” she told Vanity Fair. “We haven’t started working on a script yet, but we are talking about it.”
A former Marvel employee on Disney’s desired demographics (aka not girls and women) and what we can do about it. None of us are ignorant that Disney bought Marvel and Lucasfilm for further access the ‘boys market,’ but this is a nice overview of how licensing works, and who we have to contact to show there is a demand for more Gamora, Black Widow and Princess Leia merchandise.
We learned yesterday that Lucasfilm event lead Mary Franklin is heading to ReedPOP. And while we’ll still see her at Celebration – they produce the con and are under contract at least through Anaheim – it’s still a little bittersweet. Mary herself wrote about it today.
In addition to Celebration, ReedPOP puts on NYCC, C2E2, Emerald City Comicon and a wide selection of international events.
Greg Grunberg may have more than a mere cameo in The Force Awakens. He told E! that he was in London for six weeks, and from his description it sounds like he was involved with the Greenham Common shoot.
→ Making Star Wars has a costume analysis of the main cast and a big dump of pretty iffy rumors.
→ A speeder similar to the one Rey rides in the trailer was found in the depths of The Old Republic.
→ The president of design at Apple had a conversation with J.J. Abrams about lightsabers that may have influenced the broadsaber.
→ In corporate moves, ILM president and general manager Lynwen Brennan has been promoted to general manager of Lucasfilm itself.
Some folks at Lucasfilm are raising funds for charity, and here’s your chance to help by bidding on some original art. The items include posters signed by George Lucas and Dave Filoni, plus art from Amy Beth Christensen and other Lucasfilm Animation folks. Proceeds will go to the Breast Cancer Emergency Fund and SF Aids Emergency Fund.
Per Courthouse News Service, Lucasfilm has filed a subpoena request against ImageShack, where user “Darth_Simi” has posted a gallery of leaked photos and supposed concept art.
Interestingly, Simi’s gallery does not seem to be the source of many of the images – they’ve also posted the set shots from TMZ, Greenham Commons aerial shots, the set shot from the Abu Dhabi newspaper plus cast paparazzi and red carpet pics from sources like Getty. (And didn’t the biggest batch of concept leaks actually come from millenniumfalcon.com?)
An image explicitly mentioned in the filing, which was our first look at the broadsaber that we saw in the teaser trailer, actually originates with and is watermarked by Star Wars Underworld, who has since removed it. There are other leaks that they could pursue as well without verifying them, such as the stormtrooper helmets.
However, Simi’s gallery is one of the most complete ones I’ve seen in terms of the various photo leaks, so I can see why Lucasfilm would want it gone, even if it is ‘just’ a collection. It’s practically a (visual) one-stop spoiler shop.
I’m not at all familiar with CNS as a news source, but if there’s any truth to this, I expect we’ll be seeing a lot less leaked art from here on out. Maybe that’s the point of the whole endeavor – not to take out the actual leakers, just to scare them enough that they don’t do it again. Say what you will about a site like Making Star Wars that’s generally only describing stuff, but it would take one a LONG time to go through all of what Jason and company have posted – far longer than an image gallery. (via)