Rey costumers, this one is for you: Allure talked to The Force Awakens’ makeup department head Amanda Knight and hair designer Lisa Tomblin. Sunscreen!
J.J. Abrams on The Force Awakens and keeping secrets: “We’re walking a tightrope.”
In a new interview with Wired, The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams talks about Star Wars in general, keeping secrets, the Millennium Falcon “changing hands,” and how the previous films succeeded and influenced the new. It’s today’s must-read (so far.)
Some excerpts below the cut, or go straight to Wired.
Video: Yet more The Force Awakens footage in new TV spot
There’s even more new footage from The Force Awakens in the film’s first (domestic) TV spot. It debuted this morning on Twitter, of all places.
Some brief analysis – and screencaps! – under the cut.
Continue reading “Video: Yet more The Force Awakens footage in new TV spot”
A closer look at The Force Awakens Japanese trailer
…Or International trailer, whatever we’re calling it. The focus here is on Rey, BB-8 and Kylo Ren’s broadsaber, or in other words: A cute girl, A cute robot and a crazy-ass weapon. It’s not as evocative as the last trailer, and it seems much choppier, but there is a lot of new footage here for us to pour over.
Continue reading “A closer look at The Force Awakens Japanese trailer”
Surprise! The Force Awakens international trailer drops, with a ton of new footage
A few snippets of dialogue! More BB-8, Rey, Finn, and even a glimpse of Leia. New poster, too.
Terminally ill fan gets to see rough cut of The Force Awakens
Daniel Fleetwood, a Texas fan with terminal cancer who was given only two months to live in September, got his wish to see The Force Awakens, his wife Ashley said today:
Daniel just finished watching an unedited version of Star Wars: The Force Awakens!!! We would like to thank the awesomely talented JJ Abrams for calling us yesterday to tell us Danjel was getting his wish granted! We also would like to thank Lynne, Ben and Anahuac for coming to our home and screening the movie for Daniel.
Actors Mark Hamill, John Boyega and many more have shown their support for #ForceForDaniel. Hamill has already responded to the news.
Over $31K has been raised for Daniel’s medical bills on GoFundMe.
The Force Awakens character posters debut!
In short order today, several character posters debuted for The Force Awakens. The official Star Wars pages produced Kylo Ren and Han Solo, Daisy Ridley had Rey on her Instgram, and John Boyega and Carrie Fisher dropped Finn and Leia on their Twitter accounts. You can nab high res versions at StarWars.com.
Almost there: Best #StarWars and #TheForceAwakens tweets for Oct. 14-Nov. 3
We already covered the new trailer and even the night before, but here’s the rest. Also be sure not to miss Chris Taylor’s roundup of three years worth of Star Wars tweets, for the anniversary of the Disney sale/Episode VII announcement.
Continue reading “Almost there: Best #StarWars and #TheForceAwakens tweets for Oct. 14-Nov. 3”
The Force Awakens concept art that inspired Rebels’ Fifth Brother revealed
The Star Wars Rebels Facebook page gave us a look at The Force Awakens concept art that inspired the look of one of the new Inquistors, the Fifth Brother.
WSJ sheds a tiny bit of light on the Star Wars publishing program
The Wall Street Journal writes about how Alan Dean Foster’s The Force Awakens novelization won’t be available in hardcover until January – something we’ve known since April. (The ebook will be out on December 18, along with the movie.) It was, not surprisingly, due to a request from Lucasfilm:
David Moench, the Del Rey spokesman, said the publisher would have preferred to put out the hardcover edition out on the day the movie opens in order to capture more sales.
“We would love to release both formats of the novelization simultaneously and not miss the holidays,” he said, “but we recognize the importance of protecting the story for the fans.”
Apparently, fans still prefer the physical books:
“It’s a collector’s mentality,” said Scott Shannon, Del Rey’s publisher. The “Star Wars” titles the publisher has issued have “way over-indexed” in terms of physical book sales to digital copies, said Mr. Shannon.
Perhaps the most interesting bit of information: Del Rey has sold more than 1.2 million Star Wars books in the past twelve months. (Only Aftermath and Lords of the Sith get namechecked.) That number extends to 70 million over the life of the license (including Bantam). It’s not clear if that number goes back to 1977 or 1991, but I suspect ’77. It would be interesting to see the numbers for at least the previous novelizations, but alas.
Fun fact: Although many Star Wars books have made it onto the New York Times’ Best Seller list, only four have made it to #1: The Return of the Jedi Storybook by Joan D. Vinge, Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, The Phantom Menace novelization by Terry Brooks and (go figure) The Force Unleashed novelization by Sean Williams.