No real new releases this week, but there are ‘Director’s Cut’ versions of Star Wars #1 and Darth Vader #1 on the shipping list for Wednesday. They’ll contain extras like “script pages and in-progress artwork.”
Gawker is looking for a copy of The Force Awakens’ shooting script, because of course they are
Gawker is going all Gawker, putting out an (unspecified) bounty on The Force Awakens shooting script. But for what it’s worth, they aren’t endorsing illegal means:
Illegal things are bad! But if you are already in possession of the script and feeling frisky, let’s chat.
Good luck with that!
The Force Awakens will have a makeup line!
There will be a The Force Awakens makeup line from Cover Girl, and Rebelscum has some leaked images! (There are no actual TFA images here, just looks from Cover Girl themselves, so I’m not really considering any of this spoilers – read into the lingo as you will, but it’s all fairly boilerplate.) Yes, there is nail polish, but the colors we see in the leaks look pretty standard. Still, the last time we saw a hard push on makeup was with Estee Lauder Yves Saint Laurent back in 1999, so this is a buy-in we haven’t seen in quite a while.
And while as a former nail polish junkie Cover Girl may not be my pick, this does pretty much guarantee you’ll see the stuff everywhere.
First (full?) look at Leia’s costume in The Force Awakens?
The Hashtag Show has a leaked image of Princess Leia’s new costume from The Force Awakens. It does greatly resemble the outfit of the figure widely assumed to be Leia in the second trailer, as well as a sketch that Making Star Wars had a few months back.
You can see the new picture in The Hashtag Show’s video or in image form at iKwiz
Forest Whitaker may be joining Rogue One
Actor Forest Whitaker is “in negotiations” to join Rogue One, Variety reports today. The trade isn’t sure of his role just yet.
An Oscar winner for 2006’s The Last King of Scotland, Whitaker would be the biggest name to join the film thus far. Felicity Jones is still the only confirmed cast member, but solid reports also place Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Sam Claflin and Ben Mendelsohn in the ensemble.
Rumblings from The Force Awakens scoring sessions
Making Star Wars has some info from the John Williams scoring sessions. There are some references to rumors/possible spoilers at the link, but according to what Jason has heard the music “is brilliant so far” and “Williams has topped himself.”
→ Mark Hamill did the narration at the cast read-through, Peter Mayhew said at Star Wars Weekends.
→ An interview with Adam Driver’s stunt double, Gyula Tóth has been floating around.
→ Spoiler corner: Back to MSW, this time for some rumors on the Resistance and a sequence leading up to a major battle.
Michelle MacLaren may be in the mix to direct Anthology #2
Today was a good day for Anthology rumors. First up, apparently director Michelle MacLaren took a meeting on the second spin-off. MacLaren was most recently in the news for departing the Wonder Woman film, but her directing credits include episodes of Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad.
As for Rogue One, JoBlo has a few bullet points, most of which we’ve already been told or can guess at, but consider it a double-down on a few things.
Star Wars virtual reality is coming
Lucasfilm and ILM today announced that they’ve formed the ILM Experience Lab (ILMxLab) to create “immersive content” – aka virtual reality and such. Coming one day to a theme park or gaming console near you, probably!
If that doesn’t do it for you, there’s also a new George Lucas interview.
First (official) look at The Force Awakens toys: I hope you like stormtroopers!
Entertainment Weekly has our first official look at The Force Awakens toys, but they’re all stormtrooper-themed, so it feels a little underwhelming. (One of them, Hasbro’s Black Series 6″ stormtrooper above, has already shown up on eBay – and as it’s the SDCC exclusive, expect it to show up again.) Wake me up when we get the details on that remote-controlled BB-8.
Christopher Lee passes away at age 93
Veteran actor Christopher Lee, who counted Star Wars’ Count Dooku among his hundreds of film roles, died Sunday in London.
In the ’50s and ’60s, he was best known for his work in the Hammer Horror films, where he famously played Count Dracula, often alongside another actor who eventually showed up in Star Wars, Peter Cushing. In the ’70s, he upped his profile with pivotal roles in The Wicker Man and The Man with the Golden Gun.
(My personal introduction to Lee was 1982’s The Last Unicorn, where he voiced the villain, King Haggard.)
In the early 2000s, he gained a whole new audience in two of the decades biggest franchises, playing Dooku in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, and the wizard Saruman in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adaptions. He also appeared in several Tim Burton films.
Films aside, Lee led a intriguing life: He served as an intelligence officer during and just after World War II, where his duties involved hunting down Nazi war criminals. (In an infamous bit from the Lord of the Rings extras, he tells Peter Jackson how it sounds when a man is stabbed in the back.)
He also released several heavy metal concept albums, the last in 2013.
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