The Celebration Store had its soft open on Thursday night, with exhibitors, VIPs, and Jedi Master level-badge holders getting a shot to pick up their Celebration merchandise. Her Universe’s shop was part of the Celebration store, and Ashley Eckstein was on hand to give us a tour of the Her Universe gear at Celebration. Plus shirts, football/soccer gear, barware, and a visit from Admiral Ackbar?
Several of my fellow convention attendees enabled my shopping, and I escaped there with a ton of damage to my credit card bill. But I did show off my new Boba Fett messenger bag to Jeremy Bulloch!
Celebration Europe doesn’t officially begin until Friday (which, for those of us in the states, means really early Friday) so the big event of the day in Germany today was the press conference. But StarWars.com did drop a nice video featuring Ashley Eckstein talking about fan groups.
From the fans, we have some pictures from the floor. Bleeding Cool has a couple pages of pics and no clue about Her Universe, while Jedi News gave us our first look at Hasbro’s Darth Plagueis figure.
And speaking of, we’ve been sadly neglectful of Caravan of the Force, in which several fans have been documentimng their travel from London to Essen.
Oh, and here’s a preview from James, even as he warns us that the wifi situation is lacking:
.@HerUniverse hints that a second run of the #SWEU shirts (like Jaina and Mara) might happen… then moving onto new images!
Newswatch! Can we expect any major news out of the con for Friday? The big-ticket panels are Attack of the Clones 3D at 12:30 p.m. CEST (6:00 a.m. EDT,) Ben Burtt at 1:30 p.m. CEST (7:30 a.m. EDT,) Doug Chiang and Iain McCaig at 2:00 CEST (8:00 a.m. EDT) and Secrets of The Clone Wars at 3:00 p.m. CEST (9:00 a.m. EDT.) Anthony Daniels is on at 4:00 p.m. CEST (10 a.m. EDT,) The Clone Wars screening at 5:00 p.m. CEST (11 a.m. EDT) and Ian McDiarmid is on at 6:00 p.m. CEST (noon EDT.) The night’s capper is an outdoor Return of the Jedi screening at 7:30 p.m. CEST (1:30 p.m. EDT.)
We have reports that a The Clone Wars DVD/Blu-Ray announcement is coming tomorrow, and everyone hope really hard that Chiang and McCaig show something, anything, that they’ve been working on for Episode VII. I wouldn’t expect any casting news until Kathleen Kennedy on Saturday, but stranger things have happened!
(Confused by the timezones? So am I. All praise World Time Buddy.)
The second Celebration Europe – and our first Celebration of the post-Disney era – has officially begun with a press conference reuniting much of the Return of the Jedi cast. Luckily, Dan Brooks of StarWars.com live-blogged it.
Don’t forget, our own @jamesjawa is in Germany, too!
There will be plenty of Star Wars at SDCC with Course of the Force, a huge floor presence and licensee panels, but there will be “no Episode VII content,” StarWars.com said last night. Cross your fingers for Celebration Europe and the D23 Expo.
Del Rey, Dark Horse and Hasbro will be holding Star Wars panels at SDCC on Friday, while Her Universe has one on Saturday. Del Rey released their signing schedule today while Dark Horse Comics posted their signing schedule yesterday.
Fans at Celebration Europe will have the chance to see a special directors cut of the Darth Maul arc from season five of The Clone Wars, Reed annouced today. There’ll be Friday and Saturday screenings of the recut arc, which features the episodes “Revival,” “Eminence,” “Shades of Reason,” and “The Lawless.”
There will also be a ‘Secrets of Star Wars: The Clone Wars‘ panel with Dave Filoni held Friday on Pablo Hidalgo’s Behind-The-Scenes Stage.
Here’s a closer look at Her Universe’s exclusives for Celebration Europe. In addition to many of the new products that debuted for Star Wars Weekends, you’ll also see this Darth Vader dress, limited edition Ahsoka tee featuring Dave Filoni artwork, and a tee that features ‘May the Force Be With You in multiple languages.
UPDATE: The Darth Vader dress, while debuting at Celebration Europe, is NOT an exclusive. You’ll be able to get it on the Her Universe site and at SDCC, per Ashley.
It may not be coming to a theater near you anytime soon, but Attack of the Clones 3D will be heading to Germany for Celebration Europe II in July. Reed today announced that exclusive screenings of the converted film will be shown for ” an extremely limited engagement.”
Today we got a few more updates for Star Wars Celebration Europe, coming up in only two months:
Friday night will include a free outdoor screening of Return of the Jedi for its 30th anniversary, in the park next to the Messe Essen convention hall. I’m hoping that actual fireworks will go off over Grugapark after the Battle of Endor!
Sound designer and voice actor David Collins returns as a Celebration host for the Digital Stage, which usually showcases animation, effects, and other multimedia panels. A veteran of many Star Wars games for LucasArts, Collins might be best recognized as the voice of PROXY from The Force Unleashed.
With Mary Franklin hinting at the mammoth programming schedule she is preparing, the Celebration website has started listing the ongoing Celebration activities with the Continuous Daily Program. Check out what’s always available for Celebration attendees each day of the show.
The latest addition to the Celebration Europe guest list are 
