Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Bonnie Burton is no longer with Lucasfilm and StarWars.com. The company has laid her off, she announced today on Twitter.
Bonnie wrote content for the website and handled social media. She was hired in 2003, during the run-up to Revenge of the Sith, and has been an outspoken force for women in the fandom ever since.
We’re a little puzzled by this move on the part of Lucasfilm, but no one is doubting that Bonnie will land on her feet somewhere!
Well, something is on the horizon, but I’m not even going to begin to guess. Lucasfilm has filed for a trademark application for Star Wars: 1313, and registered various domains utilizing various permutations of Star Wars and the number.
Blastr theorizes it may have something to do with Boba Fett, who uses ‘CT-1313’ as an alias in a 2003 YA novel, but I’m not sold. Or, it could be a video game. (Play me once…)
In fact, all that comes to mind for me is Cleopatra 2525, a silly-awful ’01 syndicated series from the makers of Xena: Warrior Princess that starred a pre-Firefly Gina Torres. And clearly has nothing to do with this outside of a brain full of random pop culture dribblings.
Whatever! It’ll come out soon enough.
Last week, Lucasfilm shocked Marin by pulling out of their plan to build a film studio on their Grady Ranch property. The studio project had faced opposition from the nearby Lucas Valley Estates. Others in Marin begged the company to reconsider, but Lucasfilm is standing firm. Lucasfilm is hoping to sell the property for use as low income housing, something I’m sure the Lucas Valley Estate folks will just love. Meanwhile, I’m sure that Lucasfilm will have no trouble finding another Bay Area community to welcome a film studio.
Michael Fassbender loves Star Wars toys. Of course he does. “‘Star Wars’ was really the only sci-fi sort of fascination I had as a youngster,” he told Absolute Radio while doing promotion for Prometheus. “I collected and I’ve still got the AT-AT and the Millennium Falcon and the Ewok village.”
Lucasfilm is among those named in a burgeoning antitrust case that alleges companies stiffed “lucrative job movement in Silicon Valley by agreeing not to raid their rivals for employees.” Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe and Pixar are also named.
Is The Old Republic already losing subscribers? The analysts say TOR has lost about 10% of it’s subscribers in the last month, and they project an average of 1.25M subscribers through the year. (I’m no expert, but isn’t that kind of how an MMO launch works? Not everyone is going to stick around?)
The game has had a good share of controversy – an anti-gay campaign and a free game time giveaway that alienanted some players (Though Bioware did expand upon the giveaway.) Let the course of gaming never go smooth, or something to that effect….
Wired’s Kathy Ceceri and her family got a sneak preview of the Star Wars Identities exhibit in Montréal, and shares quite a bit about what you can see there. It opened on the 19th.
Top-notch reporting! TMZ harassed George Lucas in Los Angeles yesterday to learn what (almost) every Star Wars fan already knows: There will be no more Star Wars movies. “Never,” you can barely hear Lucas say over the ‘reporter.’ Just let the guy have a visit with his daughter, jeez.
On that note… Forbes’ Roger Friedman says that Lucas lost more than $60 million on Red Tails.
Games. For those who roll their eyes at the very mention of Kyle Katarn, stop here: Gaming media are theorizing that LucasArts may revive a certain first-person shooter. Whatever.
Tours. ‘Where Science Meets Imagination’ is still out there, and its next stop will be the Indiana State Museum in our beloved Indianapolis.
@clubjade No one here’s heard of this.
— infinata (@infinata) March 28, 2012
A few days ago I threw a link to some Willow cartoon art in an an EUbits. Lucasfilm’s Pablo Hidalgo expressed some skepticism, and came back with the above tweet today. My working theory is that the ‘animation’ art was fan art, or – if io9’s theory of the art’s Nelvana origin is true – some speculative art from an Ewoks or Droids animator that never made it any further than that?
“Although to be fair, I didn’t ask EVERYONE,” Pablo told me later. “Just those who would know.”
LEGO announced at Toy Fair that they have extended their license with Lucasfilm for Star Wars-themed toys, video games, etc. for another ten years. So not only will there be twenty new Star Wars LEGO building sets released in 2012, we’ll be seeing lots of LEGO Star Wars merchandise until 2022 (or probably longer).
As part of the announcement, they released some stats including that the LEGO Star Wars video game franchise has sold more than 30 million units with their four titles (and Joystiq seems to think they have a sequel in the works to their 2011 The Clone Wars video game). Also, from Toy Fair, Kotaku has some photos of some The Old Republic building sets and The Lord of the Rings sets (a new license for LEGO) and Collider’s got images of The Avengers sets. And for those who want to drool over all the revealed sets, FBTB has your full LEGO Star Wars set coverage from Toy Fair.
This Sunday at 9/8c, George Lucas will be appearing on Oprah’s Next Chapter on OWN. (There’s a channel finder on the page.)
The series features hour-long classic Oprah-style interviews with people she finds interesting. They usually feature behind-the-scenes glimpses of their home life, pretty straight-forward questions about things most people want to know (well, most non-geek people) and an interview with family. The teaser shows George’s girlfriend Mellody Hobson will be included.
It also looks to include a nice tour of Skywalker Ranch. And the OWN question for the week asks about places that inspire you. So hopefully it will be an extensive tour!
(And if you get the chance, the interview with Steven Tyler is really interesting.)
With Red Tails only weeks away, Lucas talks to USA Today about the movie. It’s a sidebar to a longer story detailing the genesis and making of the movie, which features Lucas alongside director Anthony Hemingway, actors Cuba Gooding Jr., David Oyelowo and real Tuskegee Airman Roscoe Brown.
GQ breaks the news. It sure seems like Ewan McGregor will be everywhere this year, but apparently the guy’s been so busy that it seems the first he’s heard of The Phantom Menace 3D is from the folks at the magazine. “They’re actually going to rerelease it into the cinema?” he asked GQ. “Well, that’s interesting.” Yeah, can’t say we’d be wildly enthusiastic to find out that our (hypothetical) rat-tail would be in three dimensions either. In other straight-from-1999 news, the Pepsi tie-ins are back.
Hobson profiled. Chicago businesswoman and Good Morning America contributor Mellody Hobson, perhaps best known to us as George Lucas’ girlfriend, is the subject of a brief profile in Forbes. She and Lucas will be featured on the January 15th episode of Oprah’s Next Chapter.
Gaming. The Old Republic might be coming to Mac. Nice try, folks.
Lucasfilm. George Lucas has big plans for a new digital technology facility at Grady Ranch, but some folks in Marin County aren’t exactly welcoming it with open arms.
Fusible reports that Lucasfilm is registering domain names around the title Star Wars: Identities. An animated film? The live-action series? Possible, but I suspect some sort of game is the most likely target. (I’ve seen some rumblings lately that LucasArts is looking for folks with experience in flight sims and first-person shooters.)