Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
The logo for Star Wars Rebels was revealed this morning at Celebration Europe, as well as a concept art of a new Rebel ship, The Ghost!
The panel was liveblogged at both StarWars.com and Bleeding Cool, but for our part… To the tweets!
Continue reading “First look at Star Wars Rebels at Celebration Europe”
David Collins has the ‘ground report’ from Essen, above, as Celebration Europe officially kicks into gear. Of course our news of the day was in regards to The Clone Wars S5 on Blu-ray. The panel itself was recapped by the folks over at Star Wars Underworld.
The folks at StarWars.com recapped Doug Chiang and Iain McCaig. (No, no sequel art! Hey, it was a long shot.) They also live-blogged Anthony Daniels and International Fan Clubs. And the highlights of the Ian McDiarmid event.
Meanwhile, Bleeding Cool’s Craig Skinner was not particularly impressed with Attack of the Clones 3D – though apparently the room was less than optimal.
(You’re following @jamesjawa, right? Other Twitter fan MVPs include @TGP73 and @TheSWU. #StarWarsCelebration is the tag to watch!)
Newswatch! Saturday is the big one, with Lucasfilm president and Episode VII producer Kathleen Kennedy! Her panel begins at 10:30 a.m. CEST (4:30 a.m. EDT. Yes, I will try to be up. On a Saturday. We are born to suffer.) But if we’re going to get any movie news this weekend, it’s probably going to come from her first.
The rest of the day’s not so bad, either. At 12:30 p.m. CEST (6:30 p.m. EDT) Leland Chee will join Pablo Hidalgo for a look at the Holocron. It’s probably the closest Germany is going to get to an EU panel. Of course, it happens to be running against fan’s first look at Rebels – also 12:30 p.m. CEST – with Dave Filoni, our second most likely panel to produce big news. Which one will StarWars.com liveblog? MYSTERY.
There’s a Doug Chiang panel at 3:30 p.m. CEST (9 a.m. CEST,) a Master’s level trivia challenge with Filoni, Hidalgo and Chee at 5:30 p.m. (11 a.m. EDT) and then the night wraps up with Carrie Fisher at 6:00 p.m. CEST (Noon EDT.)
The Celebration Store had its soft open on Thursday night, with exhibitors, VIPs, and Jedi Master level-badge holders getting a shot to pick up their Celebration merchandise. Her Universe’s shop was part of the Celebration store, and Ashley Eckstein was on hand to give us a tour of the Her Universe gear at Celebration. Plus shirts, football/soccer gear, barware, and a visit from Admiral Ackbar?
Several of my fellow convention attendees enabled my shopping, and I escaped there with a ton of damage to my credit card bill. But I did show off my new Boba Fett messenger bag to Jeremy Bulloch!
UPDATE: Here are the Thursday photos!
Celebration Europe doesn’t officially begin until Friday (which, for those of us in the states, means really early Friday) so the big event of the day in Germany today was the press conference. But StarWars.com did drop a nice video featuring Ashley Eckstein talking about fan groups.
From the fans, we have some pictures from the floor. Bleeding Cool has a couple pages of pics and no clue about Her Universe, while Jedi News gave us our first look at Hasbro’s Darth Plagueis figure.
And speaking of, we’ve been sadly neglectful of Caravan of the Force, in which several fans have been documentimng their travel from London to Essen.
Oh, and here’s a preview from James, even as he warns us that the wifi situation is lacking:
.@HerUniverse hints that a second run of the #SWEU shirts (like Jaina and Mara) might happen… then moving onto new images!
— James Floyd (@jamesjawa) July 25, 2013
Now let’s hope the 501st don’t get him too drunk:
Attended the @501stLegion meet & greet in Essen. Drank a Jabba. Met troopers from all over Germany & some from Norway, Switzerland, & Socal.
— James Floyd (@jamesjawa) July 25, 2013
Newswatch! Can we expect any major news out of the con for Friday? The big-ticket panels are Attack of the Clones 3D at 12:30 p.m. CEST (6:00 a.m. EDT,) Ben Burtt at 1:30 p.m. CEST (7:30 a.m. EDT,) Doug Chiang and Iain McCaig at 2:00 CEST (8:00 a.m. EDT) and Secrets of The Clone Wars at 3:00 p.m. CEST (9:00 a.m. EDT.) Anthony Daniels is on at 4:00 p.m. CEST (10 a.m. EDT,) The Clone Wars screening at 5:00 p.m. CEST (11 a.m. EDT) and Ian McDiarmid is on at 6:00 p.m. CEST (noon EDT.) The night’s capper is an outdoor Return of the Jedi screening at 7:30 p.m. CEST (1:30 p.m. EDT.)
We have reports that a The Clone Wars DVD/Blu-Ray announcement is coming tomorrow, and everyone hope really hard that Chiang and McCaig show something, anything, that they’ve been working on for Episode VII. I wouldn’t expect any casting news until Kathleen Kennedy on Saturday, but stranger things have happened!
(Confused by the timezones? So am I. All praise World Time Buddy.)
The second Celebration Europe – and our first Celebration of the post-Disney era – has officially begun with a press conference reuniting much of the Return of the Jedi cast. Luckily, Dan Brooks of StarWars.com live-blogged it.
Don’t forget, our own @jamesjawa is in Germany, too!
As expected, most of the Star Wars news out of SDCC was fairly low key. And, in case you missed them, here are James’ photos from the con: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Interviews. James caught up with J. W. Rinzler, John Jackson Miller, Legacy creative team Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman and the folks at Becker & Mayer.
Expanded Universe. Both Dark Horse and Del Rey had Star Wars panels Friday, and our own James valiantly live-tweeted both of them. There wasn’t much in the way of announcements, but we did get the debut of the cover for Empire and Rebellion: Honor Among Thieves.
People. MTV managed to drag a little something about J.J. Abrams out of Harrison Ford, while Mark Hamill reminisced about Comic-Cons past with The Hollywood Reportor.
Her Universe. Ashley Eckstein and company debuted a new booth and released Mara Jade and Jaina Solo shirts at the con and online… And now they’re pretty much sold out. Sorry.
TV. Phineas and Ferb is doing a kind of Star Wars crossover thing, to which I say… Okay.
Hasbro. We did get a better look at the new Mara Jadse figure, out with the second wave of the Black Series later this year.
Hallmark. The 2014 Christmas ornaments already? Hey, anything that saves us from waiting for the Dreambook is fine by me.
Also… Comic book movies galore, a new Catching Fire trailer and first looks at new Legend of Korra and Veronica Mars.
Soon, the time zone shenanigans get even wackier as James will be off to Germany for Celebration Europe… Where we hope/expect we’ll be getting some kind of sequel news or confirmation. Cross your fingers.
Saturday night’s highlight was the Marvel Studios panel, which opened with Tom Hiddleston as Loki (in full costume!) taunting the crowd and introducing a new new trailer for Thor 2: The Dark World. They continued with the full cast of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and more footage… And then the Guardians of the Galaxy cast, who’ve only just begun filming. Somehow they brought footage as well, and then… Doctor Who’s Karen Gillan, who will be playing space pirate Nebula, revealed she’s shaved her head for the role. They introduced some new Guardians concept art, above. And then Joss Whedon came out to reveal that Avengers 2 is titled Avengers: Age of Ultron. [Recaps: Tor, THR, HitFix/HitFix, Hero Complex, EW]
For the Marvel properties that live at other studios, Fox brought out the entire cast of X-Men: Days of Future Past, a time travel story which includes mutants from the original films and the prequel First Class. [THR, EW, /film] And Sony touted the just-wrapped Amazing Spider-Man 2. [/film]
As for DC… They announced that the Man of Steel sequel will also involve Batman – a new one, as the studio has previously said that they’ll be rebooting the character for any future films. Both writer David S. Goyer and director Zack Snyder will return. It’s aiming for… You guessed it… 2015. Rumor has it that they plan to follow the team-up with The Flash and Justice League. [Hero Complex, THR, EW]
A new trailer for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire debuted yesterday at the con, while Jennifer Lawrence continues to be very Jennifer Lawrence.
Becker & Mayer, the producers of the deluxe versions of The Jedi Path and Book of Sith, brought their newest books to Comic-Con. Watch the video to learn more about The Bounty Hunter Code (similar to the two previous in-universe type books), the more affordable version of Star Wars: The Blueprints, and the Barnes&Noble special book: Star Wars: Build R2-D2 Papercraft. Big thanks to Stephanie and Katie from becker&mayer for filling us in on these cool books!
On Saturday at Comic-Con, I had a chance to sit down with Lucasfilm’s J. W. Rinzler to discuss his upcoming works: The Making of Return of the Jedi, The Making of … ebooks with enhanced content, and The Star Wars, the eight-issue comic portraying the original draft screenplay of George Lucas for Star Wars. Big thanks to Mr. Rinzler for the interview, and Del Rey for their secret press room.