Celebration Europe: a trip around the store!

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!

UPDATE: Here are the Thursday photos!

Roundup: Pregaming at Celebration Europe

@jamesjawa: Rehearsing on Thursday at the Celebration stage at #StarWarsCelebration - it's Warwick Davis! pic.twitter.com/Kx1TWLleS7

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:

Now let’s hope the 501st don’t get him too drunk:

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.)

Stand down: No Episode VII at San Diego Comic-Con

Dark Horse booth at SDCC 2012There 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.

Celebration Europe to screen director’s cut of The Clone Wars S5’s Darth Maul arc

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.

Her Universe’s Celebration Europe exclusives

Her Universe Darth Vader dressHer Universe LE Filoni teeHer Universe multilingual MTFBWY tee

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.

Attack of the Clones 3D to screen at Celebration Europe

Attack of the Clones

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.”

They’ve also revealed the art show prints, which are now up for pre-order.

Other recent CEII news: Ashley Eckstein will be attending, and there will be a limited edition Her Universe dress and tee avaliable, as well as 200 of the Return of the Jedi necklaces.

Celebration Europe: Return of the Jedi under the stars, David Collins

Celebration EuropeToday we got a few more updates for Star Wars Celebration Europe, coming up in only two months: