Lucasfilm has outright denied a recent report that said they’ve been negotiating wit Carrie Fisher’s estate to digitally recreate her for future films. The statement:
We want to assure our fans that Lucasfilm has no plans to digitally recreate Carrie Fisher’s performance as Princess or General Leia Organa.
Carrie Fisher was, is, and always will be a part of the Lucasfilm family. She was our princess, our general, and more importantly, our friend. We are still hurting from her loss. We cherish her memory and legacy as Princess Leia, and will always strive to honor everything she gave to Star Wars.
The rumor originated on the BBC earlier this week, and was first reported by SWNN, with an expansion by io9.
There’s so much to say about Carrie Fisher, and so much out there that I can’t claim for this to be anywhere near comprehensive. But here are a few of my favorite tributes:
Like Fisher, Leia earned every tiny ounce of respect that came her way. She was given the title of princess because of who her parents were, but she earned the rank of general through hard and often miserable work. We love the mythos that heroes get where they are because they are special or chosen, and the people we hold up as icons reflect that. But the rebel army isn’t made up of Jedis—for the most part it’s just ordinary people united to fight for the same cause. And Leia, in spite of having once been royalty and maybe having some ability with the Force, is mostly as ordinary as any other soldier; she rose through the ranks not by manipulating the Force but by learning leadership skills and military tactics.
Simply put: Leia got to where she was by showing up and quietly learning to do the work.
[The Force Awakens] had just been released, and Carrie had quickly become everyone’s favourite part of the promotional tour. She shot down anyone who asked about her weight loss for the role and had recently asked, via Twitter, for everyone to stop debating whether or not she had aged well – as it hurt “all three of my feelings”.
Like everything Carrie said or did, that tweet revealed a truth – she told me she hated the way she looked in that film and suddenly, unexpectedly, she was in tears.
Minutes later she was in high spirits, plotting to tweet an old photo she had unearthed from the first set of Star Wars in which she was cupping C-3PO’s balls. “This is going to get me in trouble with the people at Disney,” she said, while I held the pic steady and she snapped, “but I don’t care.”
Most of my time with her involved me staring at her, wide-eyed and in blissful shock that one person could live a life so fully. We rode dog sleds in Canada, swam hot springs in Japan, pet koalas in Australia. That’s how she lived. Extraordinary. Brilliant. Hilarious.
You could always tell there was a real human being in there beneath the silly space hair — one with a sharp wit and an observer’s eye. She did not take fame seriously, and through her writings demystified it, often hilariously. She shared too, with warmth and courage, her experiences of loss and mental illness. Her life was an open book, and it was fantastically well-written.
When I’m on book tour I spend a lot of time with drivers who take me from airports to bookstores to hotels to new cities. They usually work for the book companies and they see all sorts of interesting people in their work so I always ask them, “Who is the best person you’ve ever driven?” and “Who is the worst?” I always promise not to share the worst but frankly there should be an entire book written by drivers who have seen entirely too much of the worst of people (because it is fascinating) but my favorite stories are always the ones about the best people. I’ve probably asked over 100 drivers who their favorite person they spent time with was and so far only a single person has been mentioned more than once…Carrie Fisher.
“I feel I’m very sane about how crazy I am,” Fisher wrote in “Wishful Drinking,” directly after describing “being invited” to go to a mental hospital. That was part of the charm of her writing: it would take you places you might not have wanted to go, and kept up a stream of chatter to help you remain, if not comfortable, at least comforted. Your friend Carrie Fisher was with you, even as she was observing herself.
Mashable has our second excerpt from Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath: Life Debt, featuring a pregnant Leia Organa trying to commune with the Force.
We already knew Han Solo and Chewbacca played a part in the book – in addition to the title and the Millennium Falcon on the cover, they show up in the first excerpt – but this is our first look at Leia in the time period immediately following Return of the Jedi.
(Dare I hope that Ben is born here and we learn if his last name is Solo or Organa? Not to mention why his name is Ben? But, as Wendig says, we must manage our expectations.)
The names ‘Kylo‘ and (more understandably) ‘Rey‘ have rocked up in the baby name ranks, says Baby Center. Kylo is up 67%, and Rey is up 82% since last year.
Standbys ‘Liam‘ and ‘Lucas‘ are in the top 10, while ‘Leia‘ ranks #211. ‘Anakin‘ is ranked #1362, with ‘Ben‘ at #120 and ‘Finn‘ at #148.
IGN has debuted four new posters for the upcoming Leia Organa-centric novel Bloodline that will be given out at C2E2 and “other upcoming conventions.”
The posters also give us some hints at the book’s plot. Leia is a candidate for First Senator, a position I’ll allow the more politically motivated to debate. What I find far more intriguing is the graffiti: Are we finally getting a book that actually explores the political ramifications of Leia’s parentage? It’s a ball the old Expanded Universe material dropped – Luke and Leia being twins and Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker’s kids became public knowledge somewhere along the line, but it was rarely treated as big deal, at least for Leia. (And she was Chief of State – aka Chancellor – for several books. Maybe we’ll even find out what she’s Senator of this time! Ahh, ’90s EU. I love you, but you had issues.)
We know, thanks to Before the Awakening, that the twin issue is already public – Leia refers to ‘my brother’ when Poe Dameron meets her for the first time, and he knows she means Luke – but nothing about the Vader connection until now.
Bloodline, by Lost Stars author Claudia Gray, is our first look at the galaxy at a midpoint between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Given where we end up in The Force Awakens, this is a pretty intriguing thread to pull…
Speaking of the New Republic and potential problems, some sample pages for Pablo Hidalgo’s Star Wars Propaganda have been spotted (via Jedi Bibliothek) on Edelweiss. It’s not the easiest thing to read at the size provided, but if you can manage the spread on the First Order is the clearest account thus far of how the underlying situation in The Force Awakens came to be.
Bloodline is due out in hardcover and eBook on May 3; Star Wars Propaganda: A History of Persuasive Art in the Galaxy is currently scheduled for October 25.
Tumblr user Mamalaz is mining the work of Adam Driver, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and more to create the modern adventures of Han and Ben Kylo. Head below the cut for a sample.
USA Today has our first look at Bloodline, the novel by Claudia Gray that we learn will focus on Leia Organa “some years” before The Force Awakens. (We heard 6 years when the book was first announced.)
Read between the lines:
Leia is professionally at a good place, as a senator and leader in a peaceful New Republic decades after the fall of Vader and the Emperor’s stranglehold on the galaxy. However, Gray says that a new generation doesn’t remember the lessons of the Rebellion or recognize the wrongs of the Empire, and Leia begins to see the cracks in the foundation that could lead to a dangerous future for the galaxy.
Family is a major theme overall in the Star Wars films and it plays a key role in one of the book’s most significant events, “one that has pretty far-reaching repercussions for several characters,” Gray says. “However, this novel isn’t fundamentally about Leia as a wife, sister or mom; this is about the role she’s created for herself since the fall of the Empire, and the one she takes up by the time of (The Force Awakens).”
Some The Force Awakens characters will appear in the book – Korr Sella gets a mention in the excerpt – but there will be some new ones as well, including Ransolm Casterfo, a young senator who “collects artifacts from the Empire.”
It’s nice to see a Leia-centric book set in a pivotal point in the new era – and it looks like this may clear up a few questions left about the timeline and political situation leading up to The Force Awakens. Gray’s Lost Stars got a lot of praise – let’s hope she has similar success with movie characters.
Bloodline is due out in hardcover and eBook May 3.
Rebels returned last night with ‘A Princess on Lothal,’ and on Rebels Recon, Andi Gutierrez discusses bringing Princess Leia to the show with Henry Gilroy, Dave Filoni and Pablo Hidalgo. Also, a B-wing question!
Here’s some good news for fans hungry for more ladies in the toy aisle – There’ll be a Princess Leia figure based on her Rebels appearance from Hasbro. The 3¾ figure will be in stores this fall.
In less happy toy news, there’s a new report that lays the cause of the lack of Rey toys at the feet of Lucasfilm themselves. A purported insider described a January 2015 vendor meeting with the company to the blog Sweatpants and Coffee:
The insider, who was at those meetings, described how initial versions of many of the products presented to Lucasfilm featured Rey prominently. At first, discussions were positive, but as the meetings wore on, one or more individuals raised concerns about the presence of female characters in the Star Wars products. Eventually, the product vendors were specifically directed to exclude the Rey character from all Star Wars-related merchandise, said the insider.
“We know what sells,” the industry insider was told. “No boy wants to be given a product with a female character on it.”
Hasbro is releasing more toys with Rey and other female characters, like Leia, aren’t being left out entirely. (And note that while there are certainly far less Rey items, she wasn’t totally excluded from the first wave of products.) But the report does show there’s a lot of work to be done at every level.
The Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri: 
The posters also give us some hints at the book’s plot. Leia is a candidate for First Senator, a position I’ll allow the more politically motivated to debate. What I find far more intriguing is the graffiti: Are we finally getting a book that actually explores the political ramifications of Leia’s parentage? It’s a ball the old Expanded Universe material dropped – Luke and Leia being twins and Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker’s kids became public knowledge somewhere along the line, but it was rarely treated as big deal, at least for Leia. (And she was Chief of State – aka Chancellor – for several books. Maybe we’ll even find out what she’s Senator of this time! Ahh, ’90s EU. I love you, but you had issues.)
Here’s some good news for fans hungry for more ladies in the toy aisle – There’ll be a Princess Leia figure