Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Harrison Ford is among the stars that Barbara Walters will talk to on her Oscar Special. Expect lots of questions on Indiana Jones. The Barbara Walters Special will air February 24th at 7pm Eastern, just before the Oscars. (West Coast viewers can catch it after the show.)
UPDATE 02/25: Video is here.
ABC, gearing up for their Crystal Skull trailer debut, also take a look at Indy stars past and present in Indiana Jones: Then and Now.
The Deadbolt digs back into early scripts, rumors and other reports with Indiana Jones 4: The Scripts That Weren’t.
Haven’t you ever wanted to take a little chomp at Yoda’s ears? No? What if he was a cookie? (Or, what about Vader?)
Also, cakes, as found by our own Heather W.: Jabba, stormtrooper, Yoda, ewok, R2-D2 and the Millennium Falcon, all part of Great White Snark’s Geeky Cake of the Week feature.
Well, by now you ought to be aware of last night’s big news: The Clone Wars is making a stop at theaters in August before airing on TV this fall.
New info: Warner Brothers will be releasing the film.
The press hopped on quickly, with Empire, Sci-Fi Wire, Entertainment Weekly, and BusinessWeek among those running the story. The Associated Press may or may not jump on the bandwagon before production starts in earnest on tomorrow’s papers… Even TFN finally posted it. (I wonder how many times that article will get updated by August?)
As for your general internet reaction, initial io9 and Metafilter commentors are less than impressed. Oh, lapsed fans, you so cranky… Poor babies. There there. Remember, you don’t have to give him money.
Plenty of teases abound in the Stargate universe, this week:
Via the TOSblog, which has a brief interview with the creator.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s estate and publisher HarperCollins are suing New Line Cinema, claiming that they have not received a penny of royalties from the estimated $6 billion the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings films have grossed worldwide. In addition to damages, the plaintiffs are seeking a court order giving the Tolkien estate the right to terminate any rights New Line may have to make films based on other works by the author, including The Hobbit.
The Hobbit is tentatively slated to begin production next year, with releases planned for 2010 and 2011, and such a court order would place current plans for this film in jeopardy.
USA Today: Clone Wars feature film, coming in August, leads into TV series. The series itself will follow, airing on the Cartoon Network and TNT.
StarWars.com has a few more details, including new stills and the first in a series of web-only documentaries. Naturally, there are the requisite t-shirts.
Variety has yet more details: The movie will run about a hundred minutes, and the only original actors reprising their roles are Anthony Daniels and Matthew Wood. George is executive producer, but it was directed by Dave Filoni, written by Henry Gilroy, Scott Murphy and Steven Melching, with Catherine Winder producing.
More than 30 episodes are “already produced,” whatever that means. (Almost done? Various stages of completion? Totally ready to go?)
Fan reaction to the announcement tonight has been generally squeeful, and as is the way of our people, a Livejournal community has been created for dedicated discussion of the series.
Speaking of dedicated, we now have a category just for The Clone Wars, though it only goes back to C4 at the moment. The catch-all SWTV is getting a bit crowded.
Not the redheaded orphan or the whiny Padawan, but an award presented by The International Animated Film Society. Green won for directing the Robot Chicken: Star Wars special.
There are no book or comic releases this week, but you can check out the previews for Legacy #20 and Dark Times #9.