Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
In what may be the first of many new records, Avengers: Infinity War has edged out The Force Awakens as the biggest box office opening of all time. Early estimates have Infinity War with a $258.2M opening weekend (The Force Awakens took $248M in 2015).
Continue reading “Avengers take down the Force at the box office”
An interior replica of Solo‘s Millennium Falcon will be visiting four U.S. locations over the next month.
Constructed inside three 40-foot long shipping containers, visitors can stop by Lando’s bar, sit at the famed Dejarik table, and finally get the chance to say “Punch it!” from inside the iconic cockpit. The finest details were crafted using the same molds used in Solo: A Star Wars Story!
So if you’re in or nearby Highland Heights, Kentucky (seven miles southeast of Cincinnati), Atlanta, Salt Lake City, or Denver, congrats! As for the rest of us, there’s a tour in the latest episode of The Star Wars Show, which also features Marvel’s Kevin Feige and a model Falcon made with Solo cups:
Look guys, I usually don’t bother, but we’ve got the costume exhibit opening up in Detroit next month. You can swing this by after Denver, right? Alphabetical!
Her Universe and Disney are expanding their merchandise partnership, the companies announced today. The new deal includes an athleisure line for kids and tweens called “Our Universe.” It debuts with Black Panther and Disney Princess products, with Star Wars additions coming soon. The products will be avaliable exclusively through shopDisney.com and at Disney Store locations.
There’s also a book by Her Universe founder Ashley Eckstein, It’s Your Universe: You Have the Power to Make It Happen. It’s available for preorder now, and you can read an excerpt at Entertainment Weekly.
Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy says she would “love” for Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi to direct a Star Wars movie. “I think he has exactly the right sensibility. It was very exciting to see him step into the Marvel universe and do such an amazing job with Thor,” she told Newshub.
Their headline aside, it’s hardly a deal, and given the recent issues with Solo no one would blame Waititi for being wary. But it’s certainly not a bad idea by any means. It just takes the right project, scheduling, and all that boring time-consuming technical stuff.
Time for another special episode of Star Wars Story Talk! This time, it’s a reaction video – showing me emote and express while watching the second trailer for Rogue One, that came out yesterday. Because I’m all about exuberance! Ok, maybe not, but at least Baby Jawa was in her reaction video to the first trailer.
John Boyega is taking his Star Wars sci-fi cred to the Shatterdome – he’s signed on to play the lead in the upcoming sequel to Pacific Rim. Not much is known about the sequel, but his character will be the son of Idris Elba’s character from the original. Boyega will also be a producer.
The film will be directed by Steven S. DeKnight. The first film, directed by Guillermo del Toro, came out in 2013.
Netflix announced today that come September, they will be “the exclusive U.S. pay TV home of the latest films from Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar.” The date is new, but the deal itself is old news, as is one key fact: The Force Awakens is the last film under Disney’s former deal with Starz, which means it’ll first run on the traditional pay cable channel in the U.S.
Unless you’re in Canada, Rogue One will be the first Star Wars to have first-run on Netflix, alongside Disney’s other 2016 releases, like The Jungle Book (above,) Zootopia, and Captain America: Civil War.
Disney has announced that Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford will be making a fifth Indiana Jones film for a July 19, 2019 release. Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall will again produce.
The last Indy film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, came out in 2008. Rumors of a fifth installment have been rumbling since Disney and Paramount announced in 2013 they’d come to deal on rights to the franchise following the former’s 2012 purchase of Lucasfilm.
With The Force Awakens on the horizon, a few studios are busy slipping out teasers for their next franchise sci-fi flicks. On Sunday, Twentieth Century Fox released the trailer for Independence Day: Resurgence, with Jeff Goldblum, Liam Hemsworth, and Bill Pullman picking up twenty years after the initial alien attack that was defeated by uploading a Mac virus. They also set up a site to track the history from 1996 to the present, including an explanation of where Will Smith’s character went.
And this morning, Paramount dropped the teaser for Star Trek Beyond, with a heavy dose of action, explosions, and the Beastie Boys. How many Trek films in a row will the Enterprise be destroyed? Idris Elba joins Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto in this film directed by Justin Lin of Fast & Furious fame.
Ready for the big premiere tonight? I’m talking of course of the newest space story to hit the screen, based on an earlier property: The Expanse. Airing in two parts, starting tonight on Syfy, the miniseries is based on the Expanse series of novels by James S.A. Corey, a pseudonym used by Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham, who also penned Star Wars: Honor Among Thieves, one of the last Legends novels. Andrew Liptak describes The Expanse as the new Battlestar Galactica. Check it out tonight and Tuesday night at 10 pm on Syfy. You can also watch part one online. Also on Syfy, starting tonight, is a three-part adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End.
The first trailer for X-Men: Apocalypse will debut on The Force Awakens, co-writer/producer Simon Kinberg told Collider. ” It’s our first thing out there so it is somewhat of a teaser but it’s certainly longer than a minute and it has a ton of cool stuff in it,” he told them.
In addition to Kinberg and his Star Wars connections, Apocalypse also stars TFA’s Oscar Isaac in the title role.
Rumor – and basic common sense – has it that Captain America: Civil War will also debut on Star Wars, but that has yet to be confirmed. Although the X-Men movies are based on Marvel comics, the films are produced by 20th Century Fox, in a deal that long predates both Marvel Studios and Disney’s 2009 acquisition of the company.
X-Men: Apocalypse takes place 10 years after the timeline-resetting X-Men: Days of Future Past, in the prime X-Men era of the ’80s. It’s again directed by Bryan Singer and also stars Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender and Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner.