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Report: Episode VII will be shot on analog film

AbramsThe Boba Fett Fan Club reports from a film industry event in Los Angeles today that cinematographer Daniel Mindel – a regular collaborator with Bad Robot – announced that Episode VII will be shot on 35mm film. (via)

The Phantom Menace was the last Star Wars movie to be primarily shot on film, though George Lucas was already experimenting with digital formats. Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith were both shot digitally. However, J.J. Abrams is a devotee of traditional film, and it’s his call on this round, so it’s not a big surprise.

Mindel is has worked on both J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek films as well as Mission: Impossible III and Andrew Stanton’s John Carter.

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Ben Affleck is Hollywood’s latest Batman

AffleckFollowing in the footsteps of Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney and Christian Bale, Warner Brothers has dropped the bomb that Ben Affleck will be the next Batman. He’ll join the reigning Superman, Henry Cavill, in the Man of Steel sequel that was announced at SDCC. It’ll be the first live-action film in which the two characters face off.

My reaction can only be summed up with an animated GIF.

Affleck’s doing pretty well for himself these days as a star and director, taking home a second Oscar earlier this year for Argo’s Best Picture win, but who among us doesn’t remember 2003’s Daredevil? Still, if the second superhero role was the charm for Chris Evans, certainly Affleck can turn it around as well.

And, lest we forget:

Sigh.

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Joss Whedon not a fan of Empire’s cliffhanger

The geek legend and Entertainment Weekly’s latest cover model says that The Empire Strikes Back “committed the cardinal sin of not actually ending.”

To which your EW interviewer blurted: “You think Empire had a bad ending?”

“Well, it’s not an ending,” Whedon explained about the 1980 film, which had a cliffhanger leading into the next entry of the series, Return of the Jedi. “It’s a Come Back Next Week, or in three years. And that upsets me. I go to movies expecting to have a whole experience. If I want a movie that doesn’t end I’ll go to a French movie. That’s a betrayal of trust to me. A movie has to be complete within itself, it can’t just build off the first one or play variations.”

So I guess we can trust that The Avengers sequel won’t have stop on a cliffhanger?

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EA re-examining approach to Star Wars games

ea-star-wars-battlefrontPatrick Söderlund, the executive vice president of EA Games Label at EA, recently spoke to Polygon about their approach to the Star Wars universe.

“The most important thing for me is that we take the Star Wars license and come up with games where peoples’ jaws drop,” he said. “We need to do with this what [Batman: Arkham Asylum] did for the Batman license.”

He revealed for the upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront game, announced at E3 earlier this year, EA’s DICE studio came forward to want to work on it – and is using resources developed by LucasArts for Battlefront 3.

“We didn’t toss anything out,” he said. “We’re looking at the old games. We have access to everything that was done during the LucasArts era. But we do want to take our own stance.”

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Interview: Randy Stradley & Douglas Wheatley on Dark Times

And you thought my con coverage was over! Here’s Randy Stradley, writer of Star Wars: Dark Times, and Douglas Wheatley, artist of Dark Times, discussing the start of the current arc, ‘A Spark Remains’. If you haven’t checked it out yet, Issue #1 came out in July, just before Comic-Con, and the second issue comes out today. While setting the stage for the activity in the first issue of ‘A Spark Remains’ (check out my review of #1 on Big Shiny Robot), the pair kept mum about the future of Jedi Dass Jennir and his friends, as well as other projects being worked on. Bonus: we get photobombed at the very end by a certain Sith voice actor.Dark Times: A Spark Remains #1

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Episode VII: Release dates, fan speculation, and other horrors of the news void

Stay on target!Release date hijinks. Bryan Young at Big Shiny Robot – with an assist from Variety – writes on why Episode VII probably isn’t getting pushed back to December. And Jeremy Conrad at Furious Fanboys points out that the shooting schedule for Episode VII actually mirrors the one from Star Trek Into Darkness.

And, for the record, there’s another possible date change rumor from Jedi News.

The blogside. Over at Fangirl, there’s a interesting piece on speculation and how having too much knowledge of the franchise puts fan bloggers in a precarious position. Personally, although I do and will continue to report rumors, I’ve been staying away from outright speculation – mostly because it just annoys me, honestly. I don’t mind spoilers, but as an EU and fanfic fan I’ve read more than enough half-baked versions of our favorite characters – and while I have no plans to go spoiler-free (none at all) I am willing to wait and judge on the finished product. Let’s not forget that it isn’t always the basic ingredients that make something succeed or fail – it’s the execution. And that we won’t see in full until the movie is in theaters.

Lucasfilm. Oh look, it’s the fairy musical again.

Actors. The Hollywood Reporter concern-trolls Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford does what he wants, damnit. And they also found a few Sith who’d be up for a return – Ray Park and David Prowse. Somehow I doubt a dude who can’t even get a Celebration invite is going to get a movie part, though.

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Interview: Kevin Hearne talks Star Wars and The Iron Druid Chronicles

Kevin_HearneKevin Hearne is the author of the upcoming Empire and Rebellion novel that centers on Luke Skywalker, which will be released after Martha Wells’ Razor’s Edge and James S. A. Corey’s Honor Among Thieves. At the end of July, Hearne joined his pal, first-time novelist Jason M. Hough, for the launch party for Hough’s book. I had a chance to chat with Hearne about Star Wars, his current series, The Iron Druid Chronicles, an urban fantasy series, and other stuff. Here’s the transcript of our interview:

Continue reading “Interview: Kevin Hearne talks Star Wars and The Iron Druid Chronicles”

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Rumor: Will Disney move Episode VII to Christmas?

SEQUEL TRILOGY RUMORS: Take seriously at your own risk.We’ve gone round and round on possible Episode VII release dates, and here are we again. Despite Disney’s Alan Horn telling D23 attendees that the film is slated for”summer 2015,” Badass Digest is now claiming “Disney and Lucasfilm have December circled on their calendars.” Mid-December, to be precise, and via the ever-popular “multiple sources.”

A Star Wars movie not coming out in May? While it would give production more time, why not just push it back to May 2016? And what about the Celebration already scheduled for April 2015? Could you wait another year? As ever, I’m skeptical – but time will tell.

UPDATE: Hitfix’s Drew McWeeney has also heard rumblings of this.