It’s official: Donald Glover is the new Lando Calrissian

donald-gloverLucasfilm has announced that Donald Glover will be playing the young Lando Calrissian in 2018’s Han Solo standalone. StarWars.com says the film will “depicts Lando in his formative years as a scoundrel on the rise in the galaxy’s underworld.” Glover joins Alden Ehrenreich as Han.

“We’re so lucky to have an artist as talented as Donald join us,” said directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. “These are big shoes to fill, and an even bigger cape, and this one fits him perfectly, which will save us money on alterations. Also, we’d like to publicly apologize to Donald for ruining Comic-Con for him forever.”

The Han movie, which is still untitled, is due out in 2018. Rumor has it that a third major role, a woman, has a shortlist.

Ahsoka hits #1 on NYT Bestsellers list

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E.K. Johnston’s novel Ahsoka has made it to #1 on the New York Times’ Bestsellers list for Young Adult hardcovers, per Lucasfilm’s Jennifer Heddle. The October 30th list isn’t online yet, but Ashley Eckstein has a shot of the print version.

This is far from the first Star Wars novel to make it to #1 on an NYT list (several novelizations and Heir to the Empire) but I believe it is the first YA to make the list at all. (Of course, keep in mind that the Star Wars YA novel is a very recent phenomenon, unlike the adult and middle-grade lines.)

Meet the Ersos and Orson Krennic in first Catalyst excerpt

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catalyst700USA Today has our first excerpt of the Rogue One tie-in novel Catalyst. The article also contains a few insights from Pablo Hidalgo about the inspirations Lucasfilm drew from for the film. Here’s one:

“It’s no accident that we’ve taken a look at the Manhattan project and what was happening at Los Alamos laboratories during the tail end of World War II. Being able to look at that kind of thing through history and then apply the Star Wars filter to it is really fascinating.”

I do find it interesting that Lyra seems to be a viewpoint character… Here’s hoping she gets more to do throughout the novel.

Catalyst, by James Luceno (Tarkin) is out in hardcover and ebook on November 15 from Del Rey.

Link: Lucasfilm files lawsuit against “New York Jedi” operator

Lucasfilm files lawsuit against “New York Jedi” operator. According to the suit, Michael Brown and co. “willfully continued their infringing activities” despite receiving cease and desists letters and license requests being denied.

The copyright attorneys are real and, honestly, they have a pretty good case here. There’s a lot of fan activity out there – and has been for decades – but there are limits to what you can do with someone else’s’ intellectual property.