With Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson and Martin Scorsese’s Silence on the horizon, tis the season for weird Adam Driver photoshoots. There are no goats this time, but that is a seriously gross bathroom, Interview Magazine. (Vulture calls it an “abandoned toilet dungeon,” which makes it sound only more Kylo Ren appropriate.) They only touch on Star Wars a little, but the actual interview, with director Noah Baubach, is a good read.
Rogue One nabs first (second-place) box office record
Rogue One is is already making box office records – sort of. It’s nabbed the second-highest first day for pre-sales in domestic box office history, second only to The Force Awakens. This is according to Imax CEO Greg Foster, who said their portion of the sales are “on the high end of the range of what the blockbuster biggest titles have done.”
This is well in line with the tracking, which predicts the film’s opening weekend will be in the range of $120M-150M – putting it well above almost all previous December openings. The Force Awakens’ $248M is the current record-holder, but #2 is currently The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey with $85M.
Today in Rogue One: Kennedy doesn’t feel a need to ‘cater’ to those backlashing female leads
Felicity Jones is profiled by The New York Times – but there’s a very interesting quote in there from Kathleen Kennedy on the recent backlash to female leads in Hollywood:
“I have a responsibility to the company that I work with,” she said. “I don’t feel that I have a responsibility to cater in some way.”
She added, “I would never just seize on saying, ‘Well, this is a franchise that’s appealed primarily to men for many, many years, and therefore I owe men something.’”
Jones has quite a lot to say about her character, Jyn Erso, in Glamour:
She’s a bit of a wounded animal when you meet her. There were moments when she’s been blown over, she’s scrambling to get up, and she falls. It’s important that she’s not perfect.
She describes Jyn to a blend of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. She also addresses being a feminist, how Jyn isn’t sexualized, and being paid fairly.
→ Rogue One ticket sales gave both Fandango and Movietickets.com their biggest sales day of the year, selling “hundreds of thousands of tickets.”
→ The Rogue One cast will be live (on Twitter?) this Friday.
→ The StarWars.com Databank has some new Rogue One entries, including Bistan, Moroff, Pao, Edrio Two Tubes, and the TIE Striker.
→ We may joke about Rogue Two every time someone brings up Bothans, but don’t expect a sequel to Rogue One, Kennedy tells Empire Magazine. (Of course, there’s always A New Hope.)
→ Another new TV spot, ‘Contact.’
Today in Rogue One: A very Vader commercial
With Rogue One tickets finally on sale, Lucasfilm drops maybe the best TV spot so far… Some new footage! A glimpse of someone!
→ If you haven’t bought your tickets yet, StarWars.com has a list of theater exclusives
Our first look at Bail Organa in… US Weekly?!?
→ Need new gear? Target and a Force for Change have teamed up to offer ten t-shirts, with $5 from each sale going to UNICEF. They’re available through the end of the year.
→ Another new behind-the-scenes featurette has emerged, this time focusing on Diego Luna:
Wear Star Wars Every Day: Week 47 & Cyber Monday bonus!
Celebrating Thanksgiving is what #WearStarWarsEveryDay is all about for Week 47! But more importantly, we have a special offer in our Thanks-for-giving prize drawing! If you donate to Collateral Repair Project via GoFundMe today, Cyber Monday, or tomorrow, Giving Tuesday, I will double your chances of winning a prize in the prize drawing! We have seven different prize packages to give away, including a set of four Topps Star Wars trading card series books, some of which are signed, a copy of Ahsoka signed by both the author E.K. Johnston and audiobook narrator Ashley Eckstein, and an advance uncorrected proof of Maul: Lockdown by Joe Schreiber. Just chip in $20 or more, and you’ll be entered into the prize drawings with double odds! Not even a Corellian gambler can give up those chances to win! (Especially since so few donations have been made, you’re practically guaranteed to win something!) All persons making donations through the end of November will be eligible for the different prize drawings, but your chances are doubled if you donate on 11/28 or 11/29!
Back to week 47: I wear a variety of shirts, including an Adidas soccer jersey, and a Disney Cast Member exclusive stormtrooper helmet schematic tee. For this stretch of my fundraising campaign for Collateral Repair Project, we give thanks for a bunch of fine folks who lent me some wear this week, including Dani, Lori, Russell, and Trina. Plus a shirt I bought as a fundraiser for Make-A-Wish through the 501st Legion, so now it’s doing double duty! But sadly no donations in this time frame – makes for a sad turkey!
Every day I wear a new and different Star Wars apparel item, my daily pledge makers will chip in $4.65 to Collateral Repair Project! This review for Week 47 covers November 18 to November 24 of my wearathon, and an update on fundraising for and the latest happenings at Collateral Repair Project, a non-profit organization that provides emergency assistance, education, and community support to urban refugees.
Get more info on what Wear Star Wars Every Day is all about, or make a donation via GoFundMe or a per-day pledge.
Out this week: Star Wars Annual
Say, did you hear, Rogue One tickets went on sale last night?
Wednesday brings the Star Wars Annual #2, which (of course) also comes in a variant cover. There’s also a new hardcover edition of the Revenge of the Sith comic adaptation.
Rogue One tickets to go on sale Monday!
U.S. Rogue One tickets will go on sale Monday, November 28, Lucasfilm announced last night. They’re expected to be available at 12:01 a.m. from most ticket retailers. If you have a Regal theater, you can get an “Ultimate Ticket” for $100 that will let you see the film once a day as long as it’s in their theaters. Tickets for the film are already on sale in the U.K.
In the meantime, another trailer with a few additional bits of footage debuted on a Disney ABC special yesterday. Here’s a look:
We also got new poster reveals overnight: Three new IMAX and an exclusive for Hollywood’s El Capitan Theatre.
Today in Rogue One: Michael Giacchino on his last-minute call to compose
Entertainment Weekly’s Anthony Breznican has the most extensive interview yet with composer Michael Giacchino on Rogue One. Giacchino says the film is “in many ways a really great World War II movie” with “this huge, huge heart.” He reveals that he does use “little moments” of the classic John Williams, but ” the score is 95 percent original.” Read
→ While EW gives us extended chunks of coverage, Empire magazine dribbles out a new photo and a few quotes regarding Gareth Edwards’ being hands-on with filming. But hey, they do have a bunch of character covers.
→ Rogue One is tracking for a big debut – in the range of $120M-150M. If this bears out, it could be the second-biggest December opening – after The Force Awakens.
→ Riz Ahmed profiled by the Wall Street Journal.
→ Spoiler corner: The first twenty minutes of the film was shown on the promotional tour in Mexico, and Making Star Wars has a few (though not extensive) details about the film’s title card.
It’s been 20 years of StarWars.com
In the latest Star Wars Show, it’s been 20 years of StarWars.com. The site itself has a nice oral history, and on the show there’s a chat with Pablo Hidalgo and Lynne Hale.
Fun fact: One of the reasons I started this blog was that a lot of Jaders weren’t keeping up with news on the official site. Also, I was a message board moderator there, for some reason. Never again.
But seriously, the official site has been a boon to fans, and I’m very happy that it’s continued to grow and change. Happy 20 years, StarWars.com!
Looking behind Rogue One: Han Solo, Boba Fett, and what’s after IX?
As part of Entertainment Weekly’s latest Rogue One feature, Anthony Breznican talks to Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy and Kiri Hart about what’s ahead after Han Solo and Episode IX. Hart calls Rogue One “a really good template” for launching this new kind of Star Wars film.
But overall, there’s not really that much to say right now about the future. Because even Lucasfilm isn’t sure yet:
“There are [possible movies] that we have been talking a lot about,” Kennedy says. “But we are planning to sit down in January, since we will have had The Force Awakens released, now Rogue One, and we’ve finished shooting Episode VIII. We have enough information where we can step back a little bit and say, What are we doing? What do we feel is exciting? And what are some of the things we want to explore?”
It’s certainly an interesting question. I doubt we’ll be waiting 10 years for Episode X, but how long should they wait? Will the fanbase stand for an uninterrupted string of non-Episode films?
And which standalones? Perhaps the most interesting parts of this piece look back. First, it confirms the long-standing rumors that Josh Trank’s canceled standalone was about Boba Fett. (Ugh.) They even had a teaser reel ready to show us at Celebration Anaheim in spring 2015. A Fett film still might happen – Breznican calls it “backburnered” – but it’ll no doubt have to wait until the right director comes along. (And yes, the possibility of an Obi-Wan Kenobi film is mentioned. Again, Lucasfilm knows you want it.)
Secondly, Kennedy also mentions that the idea for the Han Solo standalone wasn’t one that George Lucas mentioned as a spinoff. We’ve previously heard otherwise, which makes me wonder if the original idea came from George in a different context, like the never-produced live-action series. (After all, Saw Gerrera made the jump from there to The Clone Wars to Rogue One – why not a major character like Han?)
In another article, this time at Variety, Kennedy talks about some of the Han film’s inspirations:
“This moves closer to a heist or Western type feel,” says Kennedy. “We’ve talked about [Frederic] Remington and those primary colors that are used in his paintings defining the look and feel of the film.”
She also talks about her desire to bring in more women to direct Star Wars films.
“We want to make sure that when we bring a female director in to do “Star Wars,” they’re set up for success,” says Kennedy. “They’re gigantic films, and you can’t come into them with essentially no experience.”