Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Harrison Ford was in Chicago yesterday and naturally WGN asked him about Star Wars. “It’s not in the bag yet,” he said. “But I think it’s going to happen.” (via)
We’ve had multiple reports that Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill are in talks to return; George Lucas himself has basically said it’s a sure thing.
Today, Ford is appearing before Congress to talk about aviation.
Bob Iger was talking Lucasfilm on CNBC again, and he told them that there’s still no decision on bringing back the original actors. Or rather, that despite George Lucas’ comments last week, “We haven’t made an official announcement yet.” Indeed.
He does say that there have been “discussions” with the actors, but they’re waiting on Arndt’s script to make a final decision.
In a great story on the Lucasfilm acqusition by Disney in Bloomberg Businessweek, George Lucas more or less admits that Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher are returning for the new movies:
Asked whether members of the original Star Wars cast will appear in Episode VII and if he called them before the deal closed to keep them informed, Lucas says, “We had already signed Mark and Carrie and Harrison—or we were pretty much in final stages of negotiation. So I called them to say, ‘Look, this is what’s going on.’ ” He pauses. “Maybe I’m not supposed to say that. I think they want to announce that with some big whoop-de-do, but we were negotiating with them.” Then he adds: “I won’t say whether the negotiations were successful or not.”
That may be the big news out of this, but the article itself is a must-read on the process, with extensive input from Lucas and Bob Iger.
Last week, the whole Han Solo thing boiled up again as it was reported that Harrison Ford is (probably) in negotiations for the sequels, Meg Cabot goes to Jedi Princess Training School and Lucasfilm is in need of a copy editor. All this and the usual nonsense below the cut.
Continue reading “You can’t win, Darth: Best #StarWars, #EpisodeVII and #SWEU tweets for Feb. 11-17”
El Mayimbe over at Latino Review is reporting that Harrison Ford will indeed be coming back to Star Wars for Episode VII.
Per usual, we’re not calling this a lock until Lucasfilm confirms it… And despite the track record of them announcing these things on Friday evenings, I’m not holding our breath for that to happen today! In fact, Entertainment Weekly’s Geoff Boucher tweeted:
Harrison Ford deal? My source says not yet.”It will not be for weeks and perhaps months.”
— Geoff Boucher (@geoffboucher) February 15, 2013
Still, Latino Review does have a good track record for these sorts of scoops, and it seems pretty likely, no?
With further reports claiming that the deal with Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg is done – though nothing from StarWars.com yet, and I doubt we’ll see anything tomorrow – let’s take a blurry journey back to 1983…
Directors. Hollywood Life talks to Star Trek’s J.J. Abrams and Iron Man’s Jon Favreau about Episode VII. “I am looking forward more then anyone to the next iterations of Star Wars, but I believe I will be going as a paying moviegoer,” Abrams said.
“I am just giddy, first and foremost as a fan, to see what happens with it. I think there is a lot of question marks of how they are going to do it, and who they are going to do it with, and what the story is going to be about; but to say that I am not excited about it is definitely an understatement. We’ll see,” Favreau said. (Lest we forget, Favreau voiced a character on The Clone Wars back in 2010.)
On the other side of the spectrum, Quentin Tarantino said the other day that he couldn’t care less about Star Wars and isn’t interested in the job. But then, did anyone actually expect he would be?
History. Huffpo’s Mike Ryan takes a look at the Making of books and interviews to document Harrison Ford’s history with Han Solo, and all the comments he’s made about the character over the years.
Release date. ComicBook.com’s Scott Johnson and his sources theorize that Disney could make Episode VII the first Star Wars movie not come out in May, since Avengers 2 is currently slated for May 1, 2015. I am beyond skeptical.
Hasbro and Disney. MSN Money takes a detailed look at the rumor that Disney is in talks to buy the toymaker, while CNBC analyst David Faber said that Hasbro is denying it.
On a lark… Entertainment Weekly takes inspiration from other franchises.
Entertainment Weekly’s Geoff Boucher has a ‘highly placed source’ claiming that “Harrison is open to the idea of doing the movie and he’s upbeat about it…” But he also theorizes – on the force of Ford’s history with the role – that he may require a ‘a mandatory death scene’ for the character.
Ford hasn’t been particularly enthusiastic about Solo in recent years (Boucher runs through the quotes) but there are a few things – like Kathleen Kennedy – that might lure Ford back as well. Either way, I’m not sure we can expect to see anything on the record from Ford until he’s promoting his next movie!
From the maker of forty inspirational speeches in 2 minutes, for the mush-lovers
What if Harrison Ford never actually saw the Indiana Jones films until now? That’s the premise of this video, which mashes up a video of Harrison Ford playing the adventure game Uncharted 3 (filmed for a Japanese commercial for the video game).