I assure you, we're all hard at work behind the scenes. We're up to the Mos Espa landing in the rough cut. We've run into a small snag with how to explain Padme's departure, but we're working through it.
Meanwhile, I've picked up John Williams' new "Munich" soundtrack and I'm combing it for useable tracks. Has anyone heard "Memoirs of a Geisha"? I had no idea that was Williams until a couple days ago. Wondering if there are some Star Wars possibilities.
I recently asked a very talented voice actor named Jeff Vitkuske aka Darth Milarc ("Memoirs of a Jedi" fan audio @ theforce.net) to record the voice for Nute Gunray. It turned out great! He really did an outstanding job. He based it on "The Passion" dialogue from the test clip, and it's very close (if not better). The language is based on Dha Werda Verda, an alien poem created by Ben Burtt from the liner notes of the "Shadows of the Empire" soundtrack. Only, without the familiar words from the Passion like "Allah" and "Yeshua" people were complaining about. The other good part about making an original recording is the inclusion of proper names like "Jedi" and "Amidala", which were not possible before. I think you'll all be pleased with the result. Thanks again, Jeff!
MTH and I are now in the process of finalizing the opening crawl. I'm also working closely with a special-effects guy who is doing some preliminary Dooku stuff for me. We're testing the boundaries of what is and isn't possible as far as compositing Christopher Lee into Episode I. Stage one is to replace Eeth Koth (the guy with the little horns) in the background of the Jedi council with a slightly younger version of Christopher Lee. If it turns out good, then we'll develop the concept and try to push it further into a speaking role, but if it isn't, then we'll drop it altogether.
I'll keep you updated as new info becomes available.
Thanks to all of you who follow this thread.
--InfoDroid