The Force Awakens costume concept art in French Vanity Fair, box office predictions

tfa-frenchVF-conceptsThanks to Planete Star Wars, we now know that the French edition of Vanity Fair’s Star Wars issue has concept art of Han Solo and Poe Dameron, similar to the art we saw of Rey and Finn (who’s also featured) at Celebration. Why only in French, Vanity Fair? (For that matter, why no Poe outfit on display at Celebration?)

A Morgan Stanley analyst believes that The Force Awakens could become the third highest grossing film ever, behind Avatar and Titanic. Is he under or overestimating the film’s chances?

Star Wars 7 News says that Ken Leung (Lost) has a small role in The Force Awakens. It’s not a big leap to think he might, but this is SW7N.

New The Force Awakens promo art discovered

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New promotional art for The Force Awakens has been spotted! It’s not particularly spoilery – all the figures are ones we see in the trailer or elsewhere, though Finn has a nifty new gun.

The text on the image is in Russian, and Underworld has a translation. It’s super generic though, of course. A sample:

New episode of the space saga “Star Wars” combines iconic characters for all generations with new heroes. It tells about new worlds and new adventures.

The image is under the cut for the particularly paranoid.

Continue reading “New The Force Awakens promo art discovered”

Greg Grunberg on The Force Awakens: “It’s just gonna be incredible.”

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In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Greg Grunberg talks about how J.J. Abrams is doing (“…All I can do is ask him, ‘How’s it going?’ and he’s like, ‘Oh, I’m really happy.’ So I know if he’s happy it’s just gonna be incredible,”) the trailer and shooting the movie in secrecy:

What I’m gathering from all of the pieces I’ve seen is it’s everything that a Star Wars junkie like me wants out of the movie. We got our script pages, only the scenes that we were in. Not even what was being shot that day! It was all on red paper so we couldn’t copy it or take a picture of it. And then we had to give the script pages back at the end of the day. And we didn’t get them the day before to take them home and learn them—Carrie Fisher and I were talking about it several times, like, “This is crazy! An actor does not get to prepare on this movie.”

He also said his role is “sprinkled throughout the whole movie, in a very small way.”

We don’t have any official word on Grunberg’s role, but it’s fairly obvious if you take one of Friday’s leaked images to heart. Note to spoilerphobes: The EW interview does contain a reference to said rumor.

Ewan McGregor on The Force Awakens, the broadsaber, and (maybe) returning as Obi-Wan

Not Obi-Wan:  Ewan McGregor in Last Days in the Desert
Not Obi-Wan, really: Ewan McGregor as Jesus in Last Days in the Desert.

“I’m excited about it as much as anyone else. I saw the trailer and it looks like he absolutely nailed it and it feels right,” Ewan McGregor said on The Force Awakens at the 69th Edinburgh International Film Festival this weekend.

He’s not sure about Kylo Ren’s lightsaber crossguard, though: “If you fight with a lightsaber properly you don’t need one.”

As for Obi-Wan Kenobi:

Would McGregor return to the role, if asked? “I’ll say it publicly, here, now. I’d be happy to do the story between Episode 3, that I finished in, and Episode 4 that Alec Guinness started in. I think that would be good. Disney should definitely do that.” McGregor’s tone suggested he was half-quipping.

We’ve known that McGregor would be down to return since the very day we learned there’d be new movies, but it’s nice to know that his interest hasn’t waned, at least.

McGregor was at the festival for the U.K. premiere of Last Days in the Desert, where he plays a duel role as Jesus and Satan. At least one upcoming role keeps him in the Disney family – he’s playing Lumiere in the live-action Beauty and the Beast that’s slated for 2017.

The Force Awakens is only six months away!

tfa-teaser2-rey-bb-finn-run-imax1000We’re now six months out from The Force Awakens, Jason Ward at Making Star Wars points out. Six months! Crazy. And will we really see a full-sized Falcon at SDCC? (They did have a Hasbro-themed one at the China Toy Expo in 2013, but that rumor does feel awfully familiar… Still, now that we’re in the real run-up to the movie, it’s hard to predict exactly how high they’re willing to go.)

→ Speaking of highs, The Force Awakens’ second trailer was one for the record books – literally. Guinness World Records today said that the trailer set a new world record: With 30.65 million views in it’s first day, it’s the most viewed movie trailer on YouTube in 24 hours.

→ Emerging yesterday on Jedi Temple Archives was a TFA toy list with not a single recognizable name – No Kylo Ren, no Rey, no Finn, no Poe, no Millennium Falcon. Bizarre, no? I wondered if it was a prank at the time, but it appears they may be in code. Phew.

The Force Awakens will have a makeup line!

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There will be a The Force Awakens makeup line from Cover Girl, and Rebelscum has some leaked images! (There are no actual TFA images here, just looks from Cover Girl themselves, so I’m not really considering any of this spoilers – read into the lingo as you will, but it’s all fairly boilerplate.) Yes, there is nail polish, but the colors we see in the leaks look pretty standard. Still, the last time we saw a hard push on makeup was with Estee Lauder Yves Saint Laurent back in 1999, so this is a buy-in we haven’t seen in quite a while.

And while as a former nail polish junkie Cover Girl may not be my pick, this does pretty much guarantee you’ll see the stuff everywhere.

Rumblings from The Force Awakens scoring sessions

Making Star Wars has some info from the John Williams scoring sessions. There are some references to rumors/possible spoilers at the link, but according to what Jason has heard the music “is brilliant so far” and “Williams has topped himself.”

star-wars-episode-7-cast-announce2→ Mark Hamill did the narration at the cast read-through, Peter Mayhew said at Star Wars Weekends.

→ An interview with Adam Driver’s stunt double, Gyula Tóth has been floating around.

→ Spoiler corner: Back to MSW, this time for some rumors on the Resistance and a sequence leading up to a major battle.