Making Star Wars has a few bits for Rogue One: A name or codename for Felicity Jones’ character. (Remember, most sources for The Force Awakens were calling Daisy Ridley’s character ‘Kira’ – we didn’t hear the name ‘Rey’ until it was officially revealed just after the first teaser trailer, which could also be the case here.)
John Boyega won the EE Rising Star Award at last night’s BAFTA Awards. He later joined The Force Awakens effects team, who won for Special Visual Effects:
On the red carpet, John revealed he starts filming on Episode VIII Monday.
Domhnall Gleeson and Carrie Fisher were also at the awards, where they presented the award for Film Not in the English Language and goofed off backstage.
Entertainment Weekly has revealed Hasbro’s Maz Kanata action figure, which will debut at Toy Fair this weekend.
Sadly, for the established collectors, Maz won’t be available on her own. She’ll be released this spring as part of a “Takodana Encounter” playset along with Rey, BB-8 and Finn, for $19.99. Two female characters in one pack? Hasbro, you’re trying!
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.
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.)
Boshek, found. This is the first I’ve heard that no one knew who’d played the Mos Eisley cantina patron! Not even Pablo! But then again, how much time do most of us spend thinking about Mos Eisley cantina patrons? (Don’t answer that.) I am, however, glad he was found.
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.
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.
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.
Making Star Wars has a few bits for Rogue One: 
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 
Last time we heard a rumor from the folks at Schmoes Know it was regarding 
