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First Solo details from Entertainment Weekly

Solo gets its first Entertainment Weekly cover, and a handful of new images. Let the feeding frenzy begin! Here’s what we’ve learned:

→ The train-thing is called The Conveyex, and Han (with Chewie!) is indeed trying to steal something from it.

→ We still don’t have a last name for Qi-ra (Emilia Clarke) but she has known Han “longer than anyone.”

→ The droid L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) is Lando’s sidekick. Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and Val (Thandie Newton) are “career crooks,” while Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany) is a crime boss.

→ So much for my theory that the clean Millennium Falcon is a flashback scene – There’s a picture of Han on it with Beckett and Chewie.

→ Mimban confirmed, and it is… Muddy.

Coming up: Interviews with Alden Ehrenreich, Donald Glover and Clarke, more details about the Falcon.

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There is more than one new Star Wars TV series in the pipeline

Disney’s Bob Iger tells investors that the company is currently developing multiple Star Wars TV series.

“We are developing not just one, but a few Star Wars series specifically for the Disney direct to consumer app. We’ve mentioned that and we are close to being able to reveal at least one of the interties that is developing that for us. Because the deal isn’t completely closed, we can’t be specific about that,” he said per The Hollywood Reporter. “I think you’ll find the level of talent … on the television front will be rather significant as well.”

The show(s) are expected to debut on Disney’s direct-to-consumer digital platform, which is itself not expected until 2019.

Still, I’m exhausted just hearing this, and using the exact same The Last Jedi still THR did because, yeah. Same, Luke.

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Solo lowdown: Teaser breakdown, what may have inspired that speeder

Now that we have a trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars Explained has two videos, on the tv spot and the trailer, which goes a bit into Han’s Legends origins for comparison. Some furthur breakdowns from io9, /Film and Mashable.

A neat (and very probable) Easter Egg – does Han’s speeder echo a very specific classic car? Given how much of it wee see in the teaser, I would not be at all shocked if this is confirmed in the lead up to the film.

Costume designer Glyn Dillon says that the text on the helmet of the yet-unnamed antagonist is not Aurebesh.

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Lucasfilm calls up… The Game of Thrones guys?

No, not George R.R. Martin. (He has enough on his plate.)

Today’s big out of left field Star Wars announcement is that Game of Thrones’ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will “will write and produce” a new series of Star Wars films. The new films won’t be saga films, and they’re also separate from Rian Johnson’s trilogy.

“David and Dan are some of the best storytellers working today,” said Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm. “Their command of complex characters, depth of story and richness of mythology will break new ground and boldly push Star Wars in ways I find incredibly exciting.”

I am… More skeptical than usual about this one. I do enjoy Game of Thrones, but there’s plenty that Benioff and Weiss have done with the series that I’m less than gung-ho on. This feels like a very Trevorrowesque decision (more “edgy” white dudes?), and we all know how that turned out… Well, at least there (probably) won’t be any sexposition scenes, but more troubling is that these are dudes who seem to think that Confederate is a good idea.

In a Disney earnings call, CEO Bob Iger says the pair are “focused on a point in time in the Star Wars mythology and taking it from there.”

This does, however, seem to give us a more complete picture of Lucasfilm’s post-Episode IX plans. While I have no doubt we have not see the end of the saga films, a standalone “trilogy” and “series” seems like a good start to fill in a nice big gap… Like perhaps a decade or so?

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Rian Johnson on The Last Jedi’s throne room fight, prequel parallels, deleted scenes

IMAX and Collider held a live Q&A with The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson last night. They livestreamed it, and while I’ve been hoping for better video, you can still watch it at Facebook. Johnson answered questions about the throne room scene and prequel parallels, among other things.

Collider themselves have finally weighed in with Johnson on the deleted scenes, lack of a funeral for Han Solo, Rey’s parents, and figuring out Poe’s journey. And finally, here’s the full Q&A in a proper video: