“The Force is with them,” Rebecca Ford and Borys Kit report for The Hollywood Reporter. “John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, and Max von Sydow will join the original stars of the saga, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew and Kenny Baker in Star Wars: Episode VII, the much-scrutinized re-launch of the George Lucas sci-fi franchise now owned by Disney.”
“The casting announcement caps off months of speculation about who would star as the trio of new leads in the J.J. Abrams-helmed film,” Ford and Kit report. “Abrams, Lucasfilm and Disney have for months kept casting details as secretive as plans for a Death Star.”
MacDailyNews Take: As in: Not very (considering that the Rebel Alliance had the Death Star plans before the thing was fully operational).
“Familiar faces from the original trilogy are expected to appear in the new film, which is slated to hit theaters on Dec. 18, 2015,” Ford and Kit report. “Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher are said to be returning, and, as THR exclusively reported, Peter Mayhew will reprise his role as Chewbacca.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Although Lucas’ last three craptaculars nearly obliterated all that came before, now we have a A New Hope. Fingers crossed!
MacDailyNews Note: Star Wars: Episode VII is being directed by J.J. Abrams from a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan and Abrams. Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams, and Bryan Burk are producing, and John Williams returns as the composer. The movie opens worldwide on December 18, 2015.
StarWars.com, where the official announcement was made is currently being pounded unmercifully and is as unresponsive as Microsoft was to Apple’s iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
Yaaaaaaaawn.
My interest in seeing Disney desecrate Star Wars vanished the instant they announced the Expanded Universe is no longer canon. I don’t want to be a fan of a Star Wars franchise that doesn’t view Mara Jade and Grand Admiral Thrawn as having existed.
Disney wasn’t a bad thing for Marvel universe…
Lawrence Kasdan wrote the script, all is fine 🙂
Under the new rules, if previous material is referenced it becomes canon. I dare say major Expanded Universe characters such as Thrawn and Mara will be fine.
Heck, Episode II even referenced a character from the original Marvel Star Wars comics (at least in the background material – the air speeder stolen by Anakin was owned by one Senator Greyshade).
JJ Abrams will turn this into another Irwin Allen production.
Gotta have sparks, SPARKS EVERYWHERE when they use the force!
Do light sabres throw off lens flare?
They will now!
And high fidelity audio in the vacuum of space. Gawd, please no.
Not a single tag relating to Apple.
Then don’t click on the headline.
Who cares, we still clicked on it. 🙂
It’s not like the world revolves around Apple. Oh wait, never mind, it does.
Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell Jobs, George Lucas, Disney, Pixar.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs bought what would become the Pixar we know today from George Lucas during his Apple exile. That’s enough right there, even if Jobs didn’t sell Pixar to Disney (which also later bought Lucasfilm and Star Wars) and become the company’s largest individual shareholder (which is now Steve’s widow Laurene via trust).
(Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.)
Carls jr has bacon cheeseburgers. Kevin Bacon. Boom.
MDNAWEWFLL: Mac Daily News And Whatever Else We Feel Like Linking
STAR WARS news belongs everywhere
Ned — Ned Ryerson? I really don’t care what you have to say because you’re just an annoyingly obnoxious insurance sales rep.
Ned: No doubt Macs and Final Cut Pro will be employed in the rendering of the movie. Just imagine… 😉
Will the Death Star still be based out of Redmond?
Replacing the antiquated Death Star: The Red Ring Of Death!
Of course the Rebels had the plans, the Empire had only shortly before that hired Edward Snowden as a contractor.
Lucas sure is riding that one trick pony to its death. Without “Star Wars”, where would George Lucas be? I mean he probably did other works, but I would have to google to learn.
Lucas sold Lucasfilm and the ‘Star Wars’ franchise to disney for $4.05 billion last October.
http://www.macdailynews.com/2012/10/30/disney-buys-george-lucass-lucasfilm-and-star-wars-franchise-for-4-05-billion/
Before he sucked through 3 Star Wars prequels, Lucas also did THX 1138 and American Graffiti and also was executive producer and story writer on all four of the Indiana Jones films. We won’t talk about Howard the Duck.
THX 1138 is a certified sci-fi classic that holds up today. If i remember correctly it was a film school project for Lucas.
The white rooms are eerily reminiscent of Apple’s current logo.
I’ll talk about Howard the Duck!
Once that travesty of a film went to video, it was actually a huge hit. I think of it as being on a par with ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space‘. It’s so bad, it’s good. And it’s REALLY bad. How they turned a fun and snarky comic book into that POS is beyond imagination. Only from the mind of George Lucas…
“American Graffiti” and “THX 1138”.
“American Graffiti” was nominated for:
Best Picture
Francis Ford Coppola
Gary Kurtz
Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Candy Clark
Best Director
George Lucas
Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced
George Lucas
Gloria Katz
Willard Huyck
Best Film Editing
Verna Fields
Marcia Lucas
Andy Serkis will make a bad-ass Ewok.
First there came the Ewoks, then a 6 year old “cute” Anakin, then Jar-Jar, and now the final desecration…a Star Wars movie by Disney. The dream is now officially dead.
Classic.
So how old are the original cast now?
70?
How on earth is that gonna work? (Unless their all cgi or have small parts that are sitting down)
Dear Ageist,
Tell that to Lew. I dare ya.
The original cast will need a new version of the Star War Walker
“How on earth is that gonna work?”
Uh, maybe they’ll play 70-year-old characters?
Hate to break it to you petey, but people do get old.
When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not.
https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/2824139008/h2E66CA6A/
It’s going to be a busy old time at Pinewood Studios. Both the Star Wars films and the next Avengers are being filmed there this year.
It’s always busy at Pinewood. They have dozens of stages and there are always blockbuster movies being filmed there. I’ve worked there loads of times and the stages and outside lots are continually in use.
This is exactly what is killing entertainment now days. The entertainment industry has no creative bones in their bodies. It’s all remakes, premakes, prequels, sequels, quasi-postquels, and whatever “-quels” will come about. It seems like this has been happening since 2000. I know my comic isn’t that original, but I still made it unique enough to be mine. There really needs to be a paradigm shift in today’s entertainment. I hadn’t seen any good movie since the 90s.
I have! You must not get out much!
Great example: Yet another ‘Godzilla‘ remake. Thank Warner Bros. (of fetid Time Warner fame) for this imaginative abomination. Hollywood has shot itself in the head with a Patriot missile and it hurts. A boon for the independent film industry.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831387/
MDN is doing the usual lazy thing of lumping all the prequels together as “craptacular”. Episode III wasn’t that bad, and II was a definite improvement on I.
My favorite Star Wars movie:
Was Triumph ever in finer fettle? Beyond hysterical.
The Death Star *was* fully operational, MDN!!
Not when the rebels got the plans, it wasn’t fully operational, as MDN correctly stated.
Max von Sydow
*Fan* – But I’m hoping JJ Abrams doesn’t do to Max what Lucas did to Liam Neeson. That had to be the lamest, most 1 dimensional part in Liam’s career, a travesty.
Please JJ: Kick your best writers into gear and make this as great as ‘Fringe’.