Tag: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Posted on in Film News, News

Andy Serkis Was “Slightly Mortified” By Snoke’s Death In ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’

Actor/director Andy Serkis is making the press rounds to help promote his latest directorial effort, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and finally is talking about his experience on Star Wars.

While speaking with geek outlet iO9, the topic predictable turned to Star Wars and specifically the death of his big villain, Supreme Leader Snoke. It was expected that Snoke would become the new Emperor Palpatine and that was cut short, literally, with a death scene in the throne room.

Serkis reveals that he was shocked to find out while reading the Star Wars: The Last Jedi script that his new villain wouldn’t survive the second film, giving the impression he assume Snoke would become a franchise staple or at least stick around for the third film.

“I was devastated when I read that script because it was all going so well. I was like, ‘Man, this is a boss character. I’m going to love playing… what!? You’re kidding me, what?’ I was like ‘Okay, is a good idea? I supposed it is. I was slightly mortified, pardon the pun. It was all in the right, I think. I loved playing that character and I love the face-off scene between Kylo Ren and Rey, and so it was great.”

Serkis also says that he was kept in the dark about the origins of Snoke that were revealed in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which isn’t terribly surprising since there were multiple incarnations of Episode 9 and the Palpatine stuff seemed to be tagged-on once Colin Trevorrow exited.

“The journey towards discovering that he was a Palpatine clone was something that happened during the process because everything was so secret since Force Awakens.”

I personally wasn’t a fan of the return of Palpatine, as they could have made Snoke an immortal entity that has died thousands of time and simply brought him back in The Rise of Skywalker. Oh well.

Luckily, Serkis was doing motion capture work and allows him return to play future characters, if called upon for other film and television projects.

There is an assumption that Andy Serkis, while won’t play Caesar, will be involved in the fourth Planet of The Apes installment from director Wes Ball. The pair almost worked together on Mouse Guard, one of the large budget projects that got killed during the Disney/Fox merger.

SOURCE: iO9

Posted on in Film News, News

‘The Old Guard 2’ Will Officially Be Directed By Victoria Mahoney

Netflix has tapped a new director to handle The Old Guard sequel, as Deadline reports that Victoria Mahoney will replace Gina Prince-Bythewood. Adding that Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Veronica Ngo, and Chiwetel Ejiofor are returning for the sequel.

Mahoney was the first female director to work on a Star Wars project, assigned as the huge film’s second unit director.

The news was reaffirmed by previous director Gina Prince-Bythewood on Twitter, who decided not to direct and will stay on as a producer. The filmmaker is busy with the Viola Davis action film The Woman King.

THE OLD GUARD – Led by a warrior named Andy (Charlize Theron), a covert group of tight-knit mercenaries with a mysterious inability to die have fought to protect the mortal world for centuries. But when the team is recruited to take on an emergency mission and their extraordinary abilities are suddenly exposed, it’s up to Andy and Nile (Kiki Layne), the newest soldier to join their ranks, to help the group eliminate the threat of those who seek to replicate and monetize their power by any means necessary.

SOURCE: DEADLINE & GINA PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD

Posted on in Film News

‘Star Wars’: J.J. Abrams Reflects On Planning The Sequel Trilogy – “There’s Nothing More Important Than Knowing Where You’re Going”

There has been some criticism from Star Wars fans that Lucasfilm, J.J. Abrams, and Rian Johnson jumped into making the sequel trilogy without a concrete plan and potentially led to some contradictory moments between the three massive movies.

This was highlighted when director Colin Trevorrow’s unmade version of Episode IX, Star Wars: Duel of The Fates, was pretty much scrapped by the studio for something completely different from Abrams and screenwriter Chris Terrio with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Concept artwork and the script for Duel of The Fates made it’s way online placing a spotlight on those scrapped plans, reinforcing the narrative that the studio didn’t have a master plan for this trilogy from the start.

Abrams was doing a round of press interviews to help promote the 4K UHD Blu-Ray home release of his alien adventure film Super 8, where he was asked by Collider if they should have had a plan for the Star Wars trilogy beforehand. The filmmaker gave a mixed repose giving the pros and cons of both.

ABRAMS: “There are projects that I’ve worked on where we had some ideas but we hadn’t worked through them enough, sometimes we had some ideas but then we weren’t allowed to do them the way we wanted to. I’ve had all sorts of situations where you plan things in a certain way and you suddenly find yourself doing something that’s 180 degrees different, and then sometimes it works really well and you feel like, ‘Wow that really came together,’ and other times you think, ‘Oh my God I can’t believe this is where we are,’ and sometimes when it’s not working out it’s because it’s what you planned, and other times when it’s not working out it’s because you didn’t [have a plan].”

“You just never really know, but having a plan I have learned – in some cases the hard way – is the most critical thing, because otherwise you don’t know what you’re setting up. You don’t know what to emphasize. Because if you don’t know the inevitable of the story, you’re just as good as your last sequence or effect or joke or whatever, but you want to be leading to something inevitable.”

The main quote mentioned at the top of the interview piece suggests that Abrams laments not having a plan with their Star Wars movies.

ABRAMS: “I do think that there’s nothing more important than knowing where you’re going.”

J.J. Abrams has since moved to WarnerMedia with a massive deal to develop films/television series for the media company and Lucasfilm is looking beyond the Skywalker Saga with Patty Jenkins directing Star Wars: Rogue Squadron as the next big Star Wars release for December 2023. Other films in development stages are coming from Taika Waititi and Rian Johnson, neither are expected to continue the Rey Skywalker journey.

SOURCE: COLLIDER

Posted on in Film News

‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ Concept Art Reveals Plans To Honor Sith From The Old Republic

Some Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker artwork revealed officially by Industrial Light & Magic’s website reveals plans to further make Legends sith from The Old Republic era canon. At one point, it was revealed that the Sith Trooper legions on Exegol were named after Legendary sith and those plans seemed to have once extended to the Sith Citadel on the planet as well.

The engraving artwork below seemingly includes homages to sith such as Darth Revan, Darth Nihilus, Darth Malak, and Darth Malgus. It’s certainly disappointing

Lucasfilm is expected to explore The Old Republic at some point in the future. Kathleen Kennedy has confirmed Lucasfilm has talked about making projects within The Old Republic but wasn’t sure when they’d happen and there was a report from BuzzFeed that Laeta Kalogridis (Altered Carbon, Shutter Island) was developing a trilogy of films set in The Old Republic era.

I’m sure eventually they’ll consider making canon video games like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order set in The Old Republic.

That point in the Star Wars timeline would allow Lucasfilm to finally make original content that wasn’t beholden to previous trilogies and could ignore the video games to create brand new canon while possibly creating new characters and retrofitting established Legends characters as well. Because most of it is Legends they can redo things for live-action incarnations.

It was announced that Leslye Headland’s Star Wars series The Acolyte would be taking place at the end of The High Republic and the female-centric project is expected to focus on Sith characters. We’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that this could where Lucasfilm finally uses Legends character Darth Talon, who almost appeared in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as a villain. I think it would be amazing to see Lucasfilm finally explore the Sith Empire from The Old Republic as that would give hardcore Star Wars all the lightsaber battles they’ll ever need.

SOURCE: ILM

Posted on in Film News

‘Star Wars’: George Lucas Explains Why He Sold The Rights To Disney and Didn’t Make The Sequel Trilogy Himself

While George Lucas has been hands-off with the franchise since selling it to Disney back in 2012, fans have sort of wondered what the reasoning was behind handing over the franchise to Disney beyond the billions they gave him.

Author Paul Duncan has posted on Twitter an excerpt from his new book The Star Wars Archives Episodes I-III giving some insight, in the pages he asks George Lucas why he ultimately sold the rights to Disney and stepped away from making the Sequel Trilogy himself. Lucas’ answer seems to be more about having free time and not having to spend the next decade working on film trilogy.

DUNCAN: I wonder why you passed control of Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012?

LUCAS: “At that time I was starting the next trilogy; I talked to the actors and I was starting to gear up. I was also about to have a daughter with my wife. It takes 10 years to make a trilogy, Episodes I to III took from 1995 to 2005.”

“I was 69. So the question was am I going to keep doing this the rest of my life? Do I want to go through this again? Finally, I decided I’d rather raise my daughter and enjoy life for a while.”

“I’m one of those micromanager guys and I can’t help it. So I figured I would forgo that, enjoy what I had, and I was looking forward to raising my daughter. Also, I wanted to build a museum, which I’d always wanted to do, so I was thinking ‘if I don’t do this now, I’ll never get that done’.”

“I’ve spent my life creating Star Wars, 40 years, and giving it up was very, very painful. But it was the right thing to do. I thought I was going to have a little bit more to say about the next three because I’d already started them, but they decided they wanted to do something else. Things don’t always work out the way you want it. Life is like that.”

Lucas previously dished to Duncan about what some of his ideas for the new trilogy were that didn’t ultimately get used by Disney including the villains and how the Luke would started a new wave of Jedi with help from the survivors of Order 66.

SOURCE: STAR WARS ARCHIVES EPISODES I-III

Posted on in Film News

Marvel’s ‘Ant-Man 3’ Adds Production Designer Will Htay – Worked On Multiple ‘Star Wars’ Projects and ‘No Time To Die’

The Ronin has learned that Marvel Studios has added Will Htay as the production designer of Peyton Reed’s upcoming Ant-Man 3 and could speak to the scale of the film.

Will’s impressive credits on massive blockbusters as a concept designer includes films such as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, No Time To Die, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Solo: A Star Wars Story. His work on Star Wars isn’t relegated to just feature films as has been part of the production design team on Disney+ series Kenobi and the untitled Cassian Andor show.

Reed is no stranger to Star Wars either as he directed Chapter 10 of The Mandalorian.

Returning cast members include Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Emma Fuhrmann

Lovecraft Country’s Jonathan Majors is reportedly playing the villain Kang The Conqueror in the sequel which suggests the scale of the Marvel Comics sequel.

We’ve been hearing for months that filming on Ant-Man 3 will be taking place mainly on the stages of Pinewood Studios UK in Buckinghamshire, England and they’ll have access to The Volume/StageCraft for their shoot. The facility was used for upcoming Marvel films Black Widow and Eternals, the latter finishing up their reshoots.

Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness is currently shooting at Longcross Studios in Surrey, England with Elizabeth Olsen suggesting she’ll join them next month.

Ant-Man 3 is without an official release date but is coming out sometime in 2022.

Posted on in Film News

Daisy Ridley Reveals Rey’s Parentage Wasn’t Locked-Down Even During Filming – Confirms Obi-Wan Connection Was Discussed

With Star Wars in the rearview for actress Dasiy Ridley, she is dishing about behind the scenes development of the trilogy and her character Rey to Jimmy Kimmel Live guest host Josh Gad. Revealing that Rey’s parentage wasn’t always meant to be that of the grandchild of Emperor Palpatine (the daughter of his son/clone) and that she was indeed going to be connected to Obi-Wan Kenobi at some point. 

RIDLEY: “No. At the beginning, there was toying with an Obi-Wan connection and there were like different versions. And then it went to she was no one and then it came to Episode 9 and J.J. pitched me the film and was like ‘Oh yeah, Palpatine is granddaddy’ and I’m like ‘awesome’. Two weeks later he was like ‘We’re not sure’, so it kept changing. Even when we were filming and I wasn’t sure what the answer was going to be.”

Interestingly enough, before Star Wars: The Force Awakens began filming there was a rumbling that there was a female character being cast that was a relative of Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and this persisted throughout the questioning of Rey’s family origin. 

This example simply just points out how indecisive they were about most stuff with the films, which isn’t terribly shocking given that George Lucas did a lot of the same stuff on the original trilogy. However, it would also likely add to the narrative that everyone was scrambling to make a competing version of Episode 9 after Colin Trevorrow’s Star Wars: Duel of The Fates after he exited the film. 

Where the films are going is a little unclear despite multiple teases from Kathleen Kennedy that the exploration of Star Wars’ past ala The Old Republic is an option they’ve considered. 

SOURCE: JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE

Posted on in Film News

‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ 2nd Unit Director Victoria Mahoney In Talks For Paramount’s Action Flick ‘Kill Them All’

Earlier in the week, there was some exciting news concerning the next project for Victoria Mahoney, the 2nd unit director on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. 

The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Victoria (Power, American Crime) is currently in negotiations with Paramount Pictures to direct their feature film adaptation of the Kyle Starks graphic novel Kill Them All published by Oni Press. She most recently worked HBO’s upcoming series Lovecraft Country produced by Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams. 

The comic book project sounds a lot like The Raid and Dredd according to the rundown provided. 

Kill Them All tells of a betrayed murderess on a revenge campaign and a hard-drinking former cop who team up to take down a crime lord. Their nemesis rules from atop a 15-story Miami high-rise, so the duo must go floor by floor cutting through assassins, murderers, Luchadore gang bosses, ex-boyfriends, and office workers.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol screenwriters Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec are producing with a script penned by newcomer James Coyne. 

When they plan on filming is currently unknown and I’ll be excited to see who they ultimately pick for the two leads.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER