Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Lucasfilm and ILM today announced that they’ve formed the ILM Experience Lab (ILMxLab) to create “immersive content” – aka virtual reality and such. Coming one day to a theme park or gaming console near you, probably!
If that doesn’t do it for you, there’s also a new George Lucas interview.
Vanity Fair isn’t the only magazine borrowing some Star Wars mojo this month. Wired today has ‘the definitive oral history of ILM,’ with George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg, Dennis Muren and more. (Including J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson.)
How much of The Force Awakens is George Lucas? Well, per the Vanity Fair article (much of which still isn’t online, which means you’re going to be reading dozens of interpretations until it is) the answer is: Not a lot. I’m off to see if I can find a copy…
Some folks at Lucasfilm are raising funds for charity, and here’s your chance to help by bidding on some original art. The items include posters signed by George Lucas and Dave Filoni, plus art from Amy Beth Christensen and other Lucasfilm Animation folks. Proceeds will go to the Breast Cancer Emergency Fund and SF Aids Emergency Fund.
Today’s The Force Awakens controversy, or whatever you would like to call it: In a Strange Magic interview, George Lucas says that the version of the sequel trilogy that we’re getting are not the ones he wrote. Or, to be precise, per Cinema Blend:
The ones that I sold to Disney, they came up to the decision that they didn’t really want to do those. So they made up their own. So it’s not the ones that I originally wrote.
As with anything involving Star Wars and George Lucas, the reactions have been mixed. Bryan at Big Shiny Robot breaks out a Simon Kinberg quote where he maintains that George’s blueprint is still very much a part of the development, and points out that changes have been a part of all the Star Wars films.
Either way, I have a hard time getting upset. Even without Kinberg weighing in, it’s pretty clear that nothing in this franchise ever truly gets thrown out. To paraphrase Eleven-ThirtyEight, every bit of the buffalo gets used. And we’ve seen over the years that it’s just as possible to do a good Star Wars story without George Lucas as it is to do an unsatisfactory one with him. But the internet’s gotta internet, so I expect we’ll be hearing plenty from all sides of the issue before the week is out.
→ In other news, add a new name (and woman!) to the cast list: Leanne Best of Woman In Black 2: Angel Of Death.
→ Shocking no one, LEGO confirms they will be making sets for The Force Awakens. The surprise is that they’re actually showing them off at the UK Toy Fair – along with a non-disclose agreement. But we can see the nifty tote bag that Jedi News got.
→ /Film maintains that we won’t be seeing the classic heroes in the second trailer, despite the Latino Review report.
George Lucas has seen The Force Awakens trailer. “It was intriguing,” he told Page Six at a New York screening of Strange Magic. He had more to say on the animated film, of course: “I have been working on this film for 15 years. I was thinking about Star Wars being designed for 12-year- old boys, and I thought maybe I’ll make a film for 12-year-old girls, because I have a lot of daughters. And girls go to the movies. I worked on it on the side for those years, and we finally got it done.”
George Lucas: Museum could go to L.A. if Chicago falls through. He’s still set on Chicago, but there’s currently a lawsuit over the lakefront location. He also revealed that his plan was to film the sequel(s) at the Marin County studio project that was scuttled* in 2012.
USA Today’s Brian Truitt catches up with the elusive George Lucas, who talks about his youngest daughter Everest, Strange Magic and, of course, Star Wars.
There’s not too much about Star Wars, but we do learn one thing: He originally planed to see the first film of the new trilogy through before selling the company, but Disney’s interest happened at just the right moment.
“The only thing I really regret about Star Wars is the fact I never got to see it — I never got to be blown out of my seat when the ship came over the screen,” Lucas says. “The next one, I’ll be able to enjoy it like anybody else.”
Last night’s The Empire Strikes Back live-read had a few final casting surprises – but the big one is surely Mark Hamill as Obi-wan and the Emperor (and Boba Fett, apparently.) UPDATE: Buzzfeed has more pictures, and /Film has a lengthy recap.
Hamill wasn’t the only surprise last night – the final episode of The Colbert Report featured a lot of guest stars – including brief appearances by George Lucas and J.J. Abrams.
→ George Lucas hasn’t seen The Force Awakens trailer yet, Page Six reports this morning. “I don’t know anything about it. I haven’t seen it yet,” he said. “Because it’s not in the movie theater. I like going to the movies and watching the whole thing there.”
→ On the other hand… “I got really excited when I saw the trailer the other week,” Domhnall Gleeson said recently. “I am a fan. I saw the prequels before I saw the first ones. I am very excited about it.”
→ Did J.J. Abrams start a trend? The first picture from the new James Bond film sure looks familiar. (This is where some film geek comes in the comments and tells me every film that’s tweeted a clapper picture since 2008, right?)
→ And in rumors, Making Star Wars talks about a new kind of walker.