The saga of Harrison Ford’s broken leg gets a legal postscript. The U.K.’s Health And Safety Executive has brought criminal charges up against The Force Awakens production company, Foodles, in connection with the June 2014 incident at Pinewood Studios.
Han Solo standalone still on for May 2018 release: Episode VIII has begun filming
Disney’s earnings call yesterday, CEO Bob Iger said that the release date for 2018’s Han Solo standalone will remain in May – at least for the moment – despite Episode VIII’s pushback to December.
He revealed that filming has begun on VIII, and that The Force Awakens tie-ins have earned the company more than $3 billion globally. Hopefully this means we’ll get a dedicated announcement and updated cast list very soon…
Filming on the next Star Wars film, December’s Rogue One, is “virtually completed.” He also confirmed that Disney will break ground on the new Star Wars attractions at Disneyland and Disney World later this year. (A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpse of one of the attractions showed up in a commercial for the Disneyland 60 TV special.)
Rumor: Ewan McGregor in talks for Obi-Wan Force ghost cameo?
Last time we heard a rumor from the folks at Schmoes Know it was regarding an end credit scene for The Force Awakens. Will Kristian Harloff’s current tweet-scoop be more lucky? An appearance from Ewan McGregor as Force ghost Obi-wan Kenobi isn’t so far-fetched as to be out of the question.
McGregor already had a brief line in The Force Awakens, so maybe this time things will pan out for the Schmoes. We’ll see.
Pablo made a funny and now General Hux has a cat named Millicent (at least on Tumblr)
Lucasfilm’s Pablo Hidalgo jokes on Twitter about General Hux having a cat, Millicent. Tumblr runs with it.
Is it actually canon? Well, no. (Not yet.) But it’s pretty funny, and isn’t that what matters in the end? Under the cut, the adventures of Millicent the cat, as told by Tumblr.
The boss: New Kathleen Kennedy profile, and about that slave bikini…
Vanity Fair has a new interview and profile of Kathleen Kennedy in the wake of The Force Awakens. The most interesting part, perhaps, comes from writer Tony Kushner (Angels in America:)
“She talked about the way in which the conventional approach to these things is that a script starts from an outline, and that’s what everybody focuses on before there’s a word of dialogue.” In Kushner’s recollection, Kennedy was urging the writers to turn their focus to the characters. She kept saying to them, “Who are these people? I don’t know who these people are.” Kushner felt that “she was expressing an impatience about character being secondary to story line, which violated something very essential for her.”
He went on: “We had an interesting conversation about how a lot of playwrights start with outlines because it gives you something to hold on to, but that you know the characters are likely to derail the outline once they start doing what they do.” He and Kennedy talked about how “there’s no telling what will happen once you have invented a person. They may be willing to do what the outline says to do, but they may have very different plans in mind.” The sense Kushner got was that Kennedy “was pushing people to be unafraid of being lost for a while. It was good to see her holding the banner of complexity in the middle of this huge enterprise of Star Wars.” The machines, in other words, have not won.
She also addresses Leia’s slave bikini:
Referring to a notorious scene in Return of the Jedi, I asked Kennedy if she would ever have put Princess Leia in a golden bikini—the famous “slave Leia” costume that is embedded in the collective unconscious of legions of men who were adolescents in the 80s. “With a chain around her neck?,” Kennedy asked, arching an eyebrow and laughing. “I don’t think that would happen.” She quickly added that she didn’t think George Lucas would put her in that bikini today.
Lucas’ wife, Mellody Hobson, on the other hand, says “George is not apologetic about that bikini.” I don’t doubt it.
The article notes that there isn’t a ban on the slave bikini – but I’ve always suspected the real story is that there’ll be less bikini, as opposed to a blanket ban, considering the source of the ‘banning’ brouhaha is a pinup artist.
In any case, you’re going to want to read the whole thing.
Electronic music compilation Star Wars: Headspace, ‘Jabba Flow’ video coming later this month
I actually scrolled past this several times in my Twitter feed this morning, thinking it was just another less-than-relevant fan project, but no: Star Wars Headspace is an electronic dance music compilation executive produced by Rick Rubin with the full blessing of Lucasfilm. You can listen to a few tracks over at StarWarsHeadspace.com.
If you’re not an electronic music aficionado, though, there still may be something here for you: The Headspace site is teasing an exclusive premiere for a J.J. Abrams directed video of ‘Jabba Flow’ – apparently not the remixed version. The track by Abrams and Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda is heard during the sequence at Maz Kanata’s castle in The Force Awakens, but is missing entirely from the film’s soundtrack. Does this mean a single release? In any case, the video will debut February 18 at 8:15 p.m. on the basic cable channel Freeform (née ABC Family.)
Headspace will be released digitally February 19, with physical copies going to retail on March 18. It can be pre-ordered on iTunes now.
Roundup: The Force Awakens’ box office will pass $900M domestic any minute now
The Force Awakens will cross $900M domestic at the box office today, and $2B worldwide tomorrow, Disney announced.
In related news, Lionsgate said today that Star Wars is partially at fault for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2‘s less-than-predicted performance, lessening the November movie’s numbers by “somewhere between $50M and $100M.” Don’t blame the players, blame the game? And maybe even the ever-more-eye-rolling trend of splitting adaptions into two parts… I saw both Mockingjays in the theater, but I gotta tell you, by the second movie I was pretty much already over it.
→ The sound we hear in The Force Awakens when Kylo Ren uses the Force has an unexpected source: A purring cat, Dave Acord tells Nerdist. Matthew Wood also talks about recording Ren’s mask dialogue with Adam Driver. (Acord also reveals there’s a sound from Raiders of the Lost Ark in the mix.) At The Daily Dot, Wood gets into even more detail about the archival sounds used in the new film, as well as the ADR process and other details.
→ I’ve never been particularly fond of the autograph racket that goes on in this fandom, but I gotta say, the latest controversy – involving Daisy Ridley – really takes the cake.
The Force Awakens roundup: VES awards, how BB-8 got his voice
The Force Awakens won four categories at the Visual Effects Society Awards, including outstanding VFX in a photoreal feature. On that note, there’s a new Roger Guyett interview over at Deadline.
→ Bryan Young talked to Matthew Wood and David Acord about how BB-8 got his voice for How Stuff Works.
→ The Force Awakens is likely to pass $900M domestically and $2B globally this coming weekend, Scott Mendelson reports.
→ Your moment of extremely relevant zen: An adorable puppy finds a home.
Teaser: Lego to take on The Force Awakens in new game
LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens is coming this summer, and the teaser trailer is pretty cute. (Sorry, that’s all I got today.)
An updated Star Wars Character Encyclopedia is coming from DK
StarWars.com announced a new Star Wars Character Encyclopedia from DK and Pablo Hidalgo today. The book is just one of several new tie-ins due in April.
From the samples, it appears this won’t be the most detailed of reference books, but we’ll no doubt learn a few new things.