Star Wars Episode VII Announcement Next Month.

Weird

Kathleen Kennedy, in an interview with ABC News Radio, stated that pre-production will start in the Spring, and that there is an announcement coming next year.

What else can she tell us about the new Star Wars project?  She teases, “I have no immediate update, but hopefully in January I’ll have something that I can say.”

This should be an announcement for the director, which most are guessing will be Matthew Vaughn.    Sorry not much of an update, but Disney has been very tight lipped about this.

Thank you for reading and while your here, kick back and take a look at some of my other articles and photographs.

Bert

FTC approves Disney/Lucas Film Deal

The Federal Trade Commission has approved the more than $4 billion dollar deal between Disney and Lucasfilm.  So why is this worth blogging about?  Well, since the announcement that Disney was acquiring Lucasfilm the internet has been bombarded with rumors as to what direction Star Wars was going. With just a few official releases from Disney (George Lucas’ role, and the writers) mums been the word on the Episode VII.  Recently Alan Horn was asked about the possibility of Matthew Vaughn directing(In case you missed an earlier blog, Jason Flemyng might have let the cat out of the bag.)   His quote from the Vulture

“I would say you’ll know soon. And it’s got to come from Kathy Kennedy — we don’t have the company yet!”

The last part is the most important, they do not have the company yet.  At least now we are one step closer to hearing some facts about Episode VII.

 

Thank you for reading and while your here, kick back and take a look at some of my other articles and photographs.

Bert

Tron 3?

Since the release of Tron: Legacy Disney had been promising a sequel, which until now has been a slow-moving process. According to The Hollywood Reporter Disney’s new head, Alan Horn, announces that Jesse Wigutow was hired to rewrite the script penned by  David DiGilio (Eight Below) a year ago.   Those not familiar with Jesse Wigutow, it should be mentioned that he is a known commodity in Disney, having worked on Eragon, Peter and the Starcatcher and even the Crow reboot.

Although Joseph Kosinski is attached to direct, there is no confirmation of Jeff Bridges and Olivia Wilde reprising their roles.

Thank you for reading and while your here, kick back and take a look at some of my other articles and photographs.

Bert

Star Wars Update: George Lucas’ Consultant Job and Rick Baker

Details on George Lucas’ “Consultant” job are a basically a breathing encyclopedia?  Although the “Godfather” of Star Wars will be working on Episode VII, we will be assisting in a very limited capacity.  Access Hollywood caught up with Lucas at  the Governor’s Awards on Saturday and asked what his  duties on Episode VII were. His response..

“[If the filmmakers ask],’Who’s this guy?’ I can tell them,” he told Access at the event in Los Angeles. “I mean, they have a hundred encyclopedias and things, but I actually know a lot. I can say, ‘This is this and this is that.'”

“Basically I’m not — I don’t really have much to do,” he said.

Although vague it does support the rumors that Episode VII will take place past the lives of the Humanoid characters at least.

The second bit of news is that Rick Baker has expressed interest in returning to work in the Star Wars universe.  For the casual Star Wars fan, Rick Baker worked on the Star Wars : A New Hope.  More specifically the infamous Mos Eisley Cantina (Chalmun’s Cantina to be specific).  

“So much of the stuff I did in the first Star Wars was very quickly done. Nobody knew that Star Wars was going to be Star Wars.  I think the problem that people have with the digital stuff is the problem I have: Just because you can do anything doesn’t mean that you should. Instead of having a spaceship battle with three spaceships, they have 3,000 spaceships. Everything is so big and there’s so much going on, you lose reality. It takes you out of it.”

And man does he have a point.  I believe that buildings, landscapes and many other large-scale special effects look great in a digital form, but the life forms do not.  Although digital animation has made a substantial amount of progress since the original Star Wars movie, when put by a real actor most often the digital character looks a bit out-of-place.  The Mos Eisley Cantina scene was done on a low-budget, actually the entire movie had a budget of only 11 million dollars, a little over 10% of Episode III’s budget.  But it is one of the most memorable scenes in A New Hope.  Rick Baker has since gone on to work on many more blockbusters, received seven Academy Awards for his work, and has received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

 

Thank you for reading and while your here, kick back and take a look at some of my other articles and photographs.

Bert

To read more about Rick Baker click here

To read more about George Lucas’ “Consultant” job click here

Writers Kinberg and Kasdan working on spinoffs?

The latest speculation in the infinite “Star Wars Episode VII Rumors” is that Simon Kinberg and Michael Kasdan are working on spinoffs for the Star Wars universe instead of the scripts for Episodes VIII and IX.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog that the Star Wars : Underworld TV show was still listed as in production on IMDB.  The following quote from The Playlist proves the rumor to be more speculation than hard evidence but an entertaining idea none the less.

 

“Wait, spinoffs already? Well, it’s not that surprising given that Disney wants movies from this universe every two to three years. And this is actually particularly interesting given the recent retirement of longtime “Star Wars” steward Rick McCallum. As you might remember, he had been talking up a “Star Wars” TV series for a while, and over the summer revealed there were 50 completed scripts. Could Kasdan and Kinberg be overseeing those scripts and trying to shuffle and connect them into the new trilogy? It’s a big, broad guess, but we can’t imagine Disney or Lucasfilm are going to let three-and-a-half years of work wither away. [The Playlist]”

Thank you for reading and while your here, kick back and take a look at some of my other articles and photographs.

 

Bert