Forcecast talks with Steve Sansweet in Chicago

TFN’s Forcecast (which now has a brand-new website of their very own) caught up with Steve Sansweet at Chicago Comic Con. He talks about Celebration V and the issues as to why we don’t have a definitive announcement yet. Key statements: He hopes to announce it before the end of the summer, and “It could very well be later in the summer” than the previous events.

They also address the whole ‘second animated series’ thing. “You don’t build two animation studios and just do one series. You have other things in mind,” and “not nessarily Star Wars,” Steve said.

SDCC ’09: The morning Star Wars catchup

Use the Force Trainer by starwarsblog @ Flickr aka Pablo HidalgoGet with the now, man! Oh, USA Today. Why are you trying to fan the flames of Prequel vs. Original Trilogy rivalry? Protip: It is no longer 2002. We OT fans can (mostly) roll with it.

Party like it’s 2010. Hey, TFN came back! On the Celebration V note, the rumor mill seems to be favoring Chicago and this pleases me. Midwest represent! No Florida!

Bookstuffs. Check out the cover for The Making of The Empire Strikes Back. And perhaps today someone will enlighten us on this Star Wars: Visions thing. There’s also a panel report on what has to be the most ridiculous visual dictionary so far. And yes, Pablo you are shameless.

New Robot Chicken: Bonus segment from the DVD. Down nerds, down.

Phototacular. StarWars.com and Rebelscum don’t stop snapping.

But wait! It’s a comic con! Dark Horse is bringing select issues of Empire, Legacy and The Clone Wars to the iPhone and will be producing two Star Wars one-shots.

Nerd-spotting. Great White Snark has a Day 1 costume gallery.

Facepalm. Fans say Avatar will be as game-changing as Star Wars. Please stop feeding James Cameron’s ego. Don’t you remember what happened after Titanic?

SDCC ’09 quickie: CV, ‘In Concert’ comes to America

First off, TFN was reporting earlier that something from Hasbro was touting a 2010 Celebration V. (Their website now says “the next Star Wars Celebration.”) Presumably TFN caught an earlier version, but the site seems to be a victim of SDCC web traffic, and it’s down.

musical1As for official announcements, we now have the details of the Star Wars: In Concert (aka The Musical Journey) ‘worldwide’ tour, courtesy of a spiffy (and noisy) new site, StarWarsInConcert.com. The tour begins in Anaheim, California in October, with furthur dates in Pheonix, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Jose, Seattle, Portland, Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Presumably more dates, perhaps more international ones or even something in the general vicinity of Detroit, are forthcoming.

And finally, The Force Trainer is now in the Star Wars Shop.

Hopes and expectations for San Diego’s Star Wars Spectacular

The Death Star at CIVSo as I said last week, I pretty firmly believe that Sansweet and company are finally going to bust out the official Celebration V announcement next month at San Diego Comic Con, but I’m not sure that really justifies airing the thing on G4.

Not that C5 wouldn’t be big news for us, but for the general audience at SDCC and G4 it’s not really wait-in-line or tune-in now material. The second season of The Clone Wars and The Old Republic MMO are certain to make appearances, but the TOR trailer is old news and while it’ll be nice to see Disney’s TCW preview in wide and open release, neither of those are exactly earth-shaking.

No, the ante has been upped; I’m expecting – hoping- something big. Like some major news on the live-action series, perhaps? Hasn’t been much solid on that lately, but there have been those rumors flying around about casting and murmurs about possible shooting locations. (And now… John Williams? Not that IMDB is most reliable of sources at this point in the game.) It’s a long shot… But we can hope. For a name, at the very least.

What would you like to hear? Would C5 and The Clone Wars alone satisfy you?

The Celebration I memories continue…

StarWars.com continues marching down with Celebration I coverage with the continuation of audio from a panel with creature effects supervisor Nick Dudman. And yes, there was a dance party, err, concert – Ahmed Best hosted the Jar Jar Jam.

Also, the Stooge put an idea in my mind last night… Could this week top out with a Celebration V announcement? The smart money for that would probably be on San Diego Comic Con in June, since it’s not actually summer yet, but I’ve been wrong before.

Are we getting The Clone Wars trailer tonight?

UPDATE: There is probably a Clone Wars trailer tonight on Cartoon Network at 8:00pm: The channel is teasing something very big for that time, and TCW fits that bill a lot more than TFU. (Big thanks to Mike and Tagne!)

Both TFN and Yoda’s News have reports from Dragon*Con on Steve Sansweet’s presentation. He showed the first episode of The Clone Wars and said that the premiere date should be announced early next week with a “month long promotional series for the launch of the show.” Could said date be October 3rd?

Sansweet also mentioned Celebration 5, but without solid specifics: 2010 is a likely date, with a location in the midwest or eastern U.S, consistent with what we’ve been seeing.

He also showed some new The Force Unleashed clips. Tune into Cartoon Network for a game trailer tonight at 8:00pm. (Or… something else? Whatever: Tune in.)