After last week’s bumper edition, The Week in Star Wars is looking ahead to Episode VIII and why its been pushed back. We’ve also got some rumours surrounding Rogue One, a crossover with Marvel, Kylo Ren on Undercover Boss and more…
We’re running a competition to win this set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens Pop! Bobble-Heads containing 11 figures released for the new movie. Competition closes on February 7th – so you’ve got time to enter!
We’re going to kick things off this week with Star Wars: Episode VIII, as it was revealed this week that Disney and Lucasfilm were pushing the movie back from May 26th, 2017 to December 15th, 2017. This means we’re now getting one Star Wars movie every Christmas, rather than spread out through the calendar year as originally planned. The May date was first put in place as it marked the 40th anniversary of the iconic franchise, but ‘money talks’ and the possibility of releasing in the Holiday period with no competition means Star Wars: Episode VIII has more chance of equaling – if not beating – Star Wars: The Force Awakens‘ global box office total. What’s interesting is that December 15th, 2017 was originally earmarked for James Camerons’s Avatar 2, the sequel to the movie that is still the biggest movie of all-time (and will likely remain there). However it was announced that Avatar 2 had been pushed back to an unspecified date, claiming that the movie wasn’t going to be ready for its Christmas 2017 release. How convenient…
…And while it seems sensible to think that Disney and Lucasfilm pushed Star Wars: Episode VIII back to captalise on the success of The Force Awakens, The Hollywood Reporter claimed it was because the film was undergoing major re-writes. The story suggests that the original plan for Episode VIII was to focus on Luke and Leia, but the overwhelming popularity of Rey, Finn, Kylo Ren and Poe Dameron has caused the House of Mouse to re-think their strategy and put more focus on them…
…Speaking re-writes and it was also reported this week that Christopher McQuarrie had been brought in by Disney to do some on-set re-writes and “save” Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. While it may sound bad that a movie is being re-written as its being filmed, this is actually standard practice. Writers are always present during a film to do on-set re-writes and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story appears to be no different. So, it’s either one of two things. One: McQuarrie was always intended to go on set and do re-writes as part of his agreement from last year. Or two: original writers Gary Whitta (After Earth) and Chris Weitz (Cinderella) were hired to do the on-set re-writes but are now unavailable, meaning Disney turned to McQuarrie. Both scenarios are possible, and it’s likely that McQuarrie is not there to “save” the film…
…Something we do know for sure about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story this week is that the aliens will be “more realistic” when compared to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “In the world of Force Awakens, there was a real mixture of all different kinds, very much like the original Cantina sequence [in A New Hope],” Neal Scanlan said. “Working with Gareth now on Rogue One, he sees these aliens as being much more part of the human [world]. They co-habitate, they work together and so it’s pushed us very much to create characters that are more realistic. They move more realistically, they’re able to emote more than maybe the characters that we did for . So they’re a closer part of the storytelling. They’re less of the world, and they’re more of this group who have a mission, and play a part in that.”
…With rumours still on the mind, myself and FMTV Oli Davis sat down to look back at the rumours from Star Wars: The Force Awakens that turned out to not be true. You can watch that video below…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awfT2dB6YmA
…With Star Wars: The Force Awakens heading to Blu-Ray very soon, you can watch a featurette here that explores the movie’s visual effects…
…Seeing as though Disney owns both Marvel and Star Wars, someone felt the need to ask Stan Lee if he thinks there might be a chance we’ll ever see a crossover between the two brands. “I don’t know how many characters you can have in a movie but obviously the people who produce these things are looking to be as successful as possible,” the comics legend said. “If they feel that incorporating Star Wars with the Marvel characters will be very successful, they’ll find a way to do it. Can you imagine Spider-Man saying: ‘May the force be with you’? It may come to that! We can have as many characters join the Avengers as we want to for future movies. That might be fun too – all of a sudden Luke Skywalker is an Avenger!..”
…And on that subject, it was assumed by the Star Wars fanbase that Disney would try and put together a small-screen adventure with a TV show. You may even recall that rumour that Disney were planning three shows for Netflix. However, it looks like that’s just not going to happen. “They are focused on their movies, so we don’t have any plans at the moment”, suggested Paul Lee, president of the network, with a Lucasfilm source then adding that the current focus is on animation, such as Disney XD’s Star Wars Rebels…
…Read Scott Watson’s review of Star Wars Pinball: The Force Awakens here…
…On this past weekend’s episode of Saturday Night Live, Adam Driver reprised the role of Kylo Ren for a sketch where the Master of the Knights on Ren took part in Undercover Boss, posing as Matt the radar technician to investigate the inner workings of the staff on Starkiller base [watch a behind-the-scenes video here]. Thinking this was pretty funny, Jim Heston of ToyAddicts put together a custom Star Wars: The Force Awakens action figure of Kylo / Matt, which you can check out here…
…Speaking of toys, and the official Star Wars merchandise line was the hottest movie toy property in the United States last year, generating $700 million in sales. Tying that into the fact the franchise had the highest grossing movie of 2015, and pulled in over $1 billion in video game revenue, and suddenly not beating Avatar to be the biggest movie of all-time doesn’t seem too bad…
…Star Wars Rebels returned for the second half of season two this week, and the Star Wars YouTube channel released its latest Rebels Recon featurette, which took us behind the scenes of ‘A Princess on Lothal’ – the one that features Princess Leia. You can also watch a clip from that episode featuring Leia here and see Hasbro’s Princess Leia toy from the episode here., while we also have a clip and a batch of images from the next episode ‘The Protector of Concord Dawn’, which you can see here…
…April is set to be an exciting month for Star Wars fans, with Marvel set to release four new issues in Star Wars #18, Star Wars: Darth Vader #19, Star Wars: Poe Dameron #1 and Star Wars: Obi-Wan and Anakin #4, and you can check out the covers for them here…
…And lastly, here’s your comic book preview for the week in Star Wars: Kanan #10: Caleb Dume’s first days in The Clone Wars continue…Master Billaba brings her Padawan and their clones to the Battle of Mygeeto. Separatist Generals Sear and Grievous lay in wait…
That’s all for this week – may The Force be with you…
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth and a contributor on The Flickering Myth Movie Show. You can follow him on Twitter @ThisisLukeOwen.
