Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
A two-part press conference with The Force Awakens notables was held this afternoon in Los Angeles. It was moderated by (surprise!) Mindy Kaling, and here are a few things we learned. (Thanks to Entertainment Weekly and ComicBook liveblogs, plus all the live-tweeters.)
Today’s must read is Lawrence Kasdan at the Los Angeles Times. He talks about coming back to Star Wars, working with J.J. Abrams, canon (pure gold here), and the inate goofiness of the original trilogy. Just some great stuff.
Plus, on Rian Johnson’s Episode VIII: “He’s going to make some weird thing.”
(The LAT also headed to Abu Dhabi.)
→ Carrie Fisher was on Live! with Kelly and Michael this morning, where she dubs her poster hairstyle “the baboon ass.” She’s in the Wall Street Journal as well.
→ The Fiat Chrysler Star Wars commercials are surprisingly clever (particularly given how weird their Hunger Games ones are) and one even has today’s MVP, Mark Hamill! (Okay, he’s just narrating.)
→ On the talk shows last night, we had Lupita Nyong’o and Adam Driver.
→ J.J. Abrams’ assistant Morgan Dameron on having a character named after her.
→ J.J. Abrams and John Boyega are firmly on Team Han Shot First. Sorry, George.
→ Chat alerts: There’s a cast Q&A tomorrow on Twitter, while John Boyega and Oscar Isaac will be answering questions via Complex Magazine on Tumblr.
Carrie Fisher is on the cover of Good Housekeeping, or at least the U.K. edition, for January. (That’s December in magazine world.) Most of the soundbites pulled out of the interview have been about being older in Hollywood and having to lose weight for The Force Awakens, but it does look like there may be more to the interview. Lifestyle magazines, go figure! Other new Star Wars covers include Lupita Nyong’o for Elle UK (you can find her on Essence in the U.S.) and Daisy Ridley for Glamour UK. Daisy’s December cover for Elle US is on shelves now. People also has a The Force Awakens ‘collector’s edition’ coming to newsstands December 9.
→ On Good Morning America, Harrison Ford revealed he’s seen The Force Awakens and declines to reveal Han Solo’s relationship status. Howard Stern had Adam Driver on, and I definitely recommend giving it a listen. (Driver revealed – accidentally? – he’s signed for 3.) And going back to yesterday’s J.J. Abrams interview on Sirius XM, he talks about that first cast photo.
→ New features from the Disney Channel on Finn and BB-8. And in his second explainer video, Entertainment Weekly’s Anthony Breznican talks about Rey’s speeder.
→ If you feel like you’ve been seeing a lot of Star Wars commercials lately, that’s because Disney has claimed the top spot in movie ad spending for The Force Awakens.
→ Of course Abu Dhabi (aka Jakku) will be hosting the film’s Middle Eastern premiere. It’ll be December 16th at the Dubai International Film Festival. Meanwhile, the movie will open on January 9th in China.
It’s going to be a busy week for our DVRs. Good Morning America will have J.J. Abrams on Monday, Harrison Ford on Tuesday, and John Boyega and Daisy Ridley on Wednesday. Carrie Fisher will be on Live with Michael and Kelly on Thursday.
Abrams and Ford will also be on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Monday and Tuesday. Then, Lupita Nyong’o will be on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Wednesday, while Fallon will host Adam Driver. Daisy Ridley will be on Fallon Thursday night.
J.J. Abrams and the cast of The Force Awakens talk about the new Omaze initiative today. It launched with help from Harrison Ford last week, but a key cast member is missing from this one. However, it does end with a ‘to be continued…’
For more information on the charities selected by the cast, head to StarWars.com.
Last night’s The Force Awakens episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live was short on actual news, but at least our folks were somewhat charming. Below the cut, J.J. Abrams reveals the first word of the movie, Harrison Ford and Chewbacca settle their long-time feud, and Carrie Fisher, John Boyega, Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley are defeated in Star Wars trivia by a 7-year-old, because of course.
Continue reading “Videos: Highlights of J.J. Abrams, The Force Awakens cast on Jimmy Kimmel Live”
Director J.J. Abrams and stars Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher will be on a special The Force Awakens episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight.
Most recently, Ford showed up on Kimmel’s Halloween episode.
Live begins at 11:35pm ET on ABC; Tune in or don’t forget to set your DVR!
There’s a fairly epic gallery of props from The Force Awakens at Wired today. Lots of good stuff for weapons and helmet geeks. And yes, some of them do have very complicated names.
→ Mark Hamill on keeping secrets. (No, he’s not in mo-cap for Star Wars.)
→ The Force Awakens has already pulled in more than $50M in advance ticket sales, the Wall Street Journal reports.
→ Empire has a new Kylo Ren photo (not that different from several of the old Kylo Ren photos) and Adam Driver’s compares the character to a religious fanatic. (It’s Adam Driver’s birthday, by the way. He is 32.)
→ Check out a custom stormtrooper Fiat 500e, on display at the Los Angeles Auto Show.
→ The Hollywood Reporter on The Force Awakens’ Oscar chances. It’s not that kind of movie, kids, but knock yourselves out, I guess.
Between Wired’s J.J. Abrams interview, Entertainment Weekly and all those TV spots, we seem to have officially entered the “faster, more intense” phrase of The Force Awakens marketing. (No, you haven’t seen too much, calm down.) Here’s some stuff that got sidelined:
→ Settle your bets: The crossguard blades on Kylo Ren’s lightsaber “are raw power vented from the primary central blade,” per the description on display at Disneyland’s Star Wars Launch Bay. (IGN has a tour.) We already knew he built it himself, but the design is “ancient.” (via Reddit)
→ Speaking of Kylo, we haven’t seen much of Adam Driver lately, but he did tell Vulture that he found SDCC to be “intense” and “surprisingly moving.”
→ The Force Awakens is skipping some early award shows, says The Wrap, but the only one here you may have heard of is the Screen Actors Guild Awards. It will be out in time for consideration for the Academy Awards.
→ Variety says there was indeed new music from The Force Awakens in the Shondaland spot.
→ The cover for The Force Awakens novelization has been spotted on the Random House catalog (by Roqoo Depot first, I believe) and it’s… The poster. ‘Kay.
And in other movies…
→ Could Episode VIII return to Ireland? We know they’ve already shot on Skellig Michael, RTE thinks they’re looking at another location in County Kerry as well.
→ Jedi News claims to have the codename for Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Han Solo spinoff.
The Associated Press was first to ask The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams about how Luke Skywalker has been missing from all the promotional material. “These are good questions to be asking,” he said. “I can’t wait for you to find out the answer.”
“It’s no accident,” he continued.
One thing we can put to rest: Luke is not Kylo Ren. Adam Driver is playing Kylo Ren, not Mark Hamill, which we’ve known since the Vanity Fair shots were unveiled in May. Bring up the Kahn fib from Star Trek Into Darkness all you like, but no one was going around saying that Benedict Cumberbatch’s role was actually being played by Bruce Greenwood. A ten-year-old video of Mark Hamill saying he’d have liked a more complicated arc in Return of the Jedi is not really the best evidence for that actually happening now.
Abrams also addressed where production stands: “The visual effects process goes on for so long that my guess is we’ll probably be doing visual effects for the next three or four weeks, even though the cut will be done before then. We’re in the editing room working on the cut, going over visual effects and going over reviews. We still have another scoring session with John Williams, who’s a god when it comes to music.”