Disney just moved Ant-Man up from its original planned release of November 2015 to July 31st, meaning it will now hit only three months after The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Seeing as how they've only got Finding Dory still slated for the year's end, the likelyhood of a December release for Episode VII now seems even higher.
CO said:
SilverWook said:
And before anyone starts kvetching about J.J. hiring people he's worked with before, remember George kept hiring that Harrison Ford guy long after American Graffiti.
Actually, Tom Selleck was their first choice for Indiana Jones, but he was contractually obligated to Magnum PI at the time.
And Christopher Walken was Lucas's first choice for Han Solo, as he would have been a much darker character then the more sarcastic that Ford ended up playing him.
I'd heard about Walken auditioning for Han Solo (the Kevin Spacey snl skit has made it infamous), but this is the first I've read of him being Lucas' first choice. Fascinating. I wonder who overruled him (or got him to change his mind).
Anyway, I'm a little surprised no one here mentioned the casting rumors from last week about Alex Pettyfer and Rachel Hurd-Wood. The overwhelming response to the Pettyfer rumor was "Oh, Please God, NO," but Hurd-Wood looks like she'd do nicely. I haven't seen any of her movies, only know of her as the girl from that Peter Pan movie from a decade ago, but she's a talented actress by all accounts. Her imdb photo screams Star Wars imo.
Since the production is filming in the U.K., they're obviously trying to cast locally. The casting rumor from last week teased a "big rumor" for this week, and now we know it's Cumberbatch. That makes two Abrams alums whose names have been floated (the other being Jonathen Rhys-Meyers).
I think it's a foregone conclusion Simon Pegg will get his friend J.J. to cast him in this. To me it just seems too obvious to not happen.
So, aside from Ryan Gosling and Zack Effron, any other casting rumors I'm forgetting?
RAH's letter begs the question: just how good/bad would the '85 IP have looked if it'd been re-scanned in 2006?
Didn't Taylor and Lucas disagree over how the movie should be shot?
Ahhh, the days before the Yes Men.
Forgot that he shot Dr. Strangelove (which featured James Earl Jones as one of the bomber pilots). Never considered the parallels between the war room and the Death Star interiors.
A big reason Lucas hired him was because of his work on The Dam Busters, the climactic sequence of which George modeled the trench run after.
I figured Mindel would get the job. Between John Carter and the Star Trek rebootquels, he's gotten more practice for a theoretical Star Wars movie than probably any other cinematographer out there. He and Abrams probably have a good repore by now after M:I-3 and the two Star Treks.
Do we yet know who the production designer is?
Disney wouldn't bother getting the rights to the Fox fanfare if they were releasing the movie themselves.
What I could see happening is Disney giving Fox theatrical distribution on the ST in exchange for getting full distribution on I-VI right now. Fox gets to make money they otherwise wouldn't have, Disney gets the existing movies, and we get our fanfare. Everyone wins! The situation for Disney would be no different than it was for Lucas on the prequels.
Of course, Fox will probably ask for some additional upfront payment before they completely let go of I-VI, but the two companies would be foolish to not at least consider this idea.
Perhaps it's best to say that Indy IV was more dissapointing as an Indy movie than the prequels were as Star Wars movies, but I would certainly argue the prequels were more dissapointing as movies than Indy IV was as a movie. Spielberg's worst is still better than Lucas.' I wish Steven had directed TPM.
Word on the street is that Disney's planning to release this thing in December of 2015. Way less competition at the box office and more time to finish the movie.
I guess it's too late for them to push it back to May of 2016 (which the traditionalists in all of us would prefer) after spouting a date of 2015 in every single proclamation since the Disney deal was announced back in October. Also, yeah, I guess they like money a lot. Even if May of 2016 is still an empty playing field, it'll fill up fast. December of '15, on the other hand, isn't likely to be crowded with anything other than oscar-bait.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the original film not start shooting until March of '76??? I realize they still need to iron out the script, but whatever happened to all this talk of making it "the old-fashioned way?"
As for box office competition, I would've thought they'd like the idea of releasing Avengers 2 and Ep7 at opposite ends of May, guaranteeing first place for well over a month. I guess spreading things out makes a little more sense, though.
Anyway, nothing official yet, just a rumor.
True story:
I was in 8th grade when the TPM teaser hit in November of '98. The morning after it aired on Entertainment Tonight, I remember this one guy in my class thinking Samuel L. Jackson's character was supposed to be a younger version of Lando.
To be fair, the problems with Into Darkness stem from the script and not from Abrams' direction. That's why I hope this rumor of Orci/Kurtzman and maybe even Lindelof working on the Ep7 script aren't true. These people have already been involved in just about every other big genre property of the last several years. Adding Star Wars to the list because their friend happened to get the directing gig would just be greedy.
ETA: SilverWook beat me to it.
Also,
Ryan McAvoy, that's exactly what I've been thinking for years now! Someone finally said it!
I don't think that's the case.
You might be getting this mixed up with something else RAH said.
I'm pretty sure the new pieces of negative were inserted directly into the o-neg. Most of those new pieces were replacements for original pieces, which were hopefully put into storage.
It's worth noting that when Tron Legacy was hitting theaters, Disney not only held off a blu-ray release of the original but also discontinued the existing dvd. They didn't want the kids today getting the wrong impression of what they were doing with the sequel. The lackluster success of Tron Legacy and the box office disaster of John Carter were pointed to as motivating factors in Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm.
Still no individual releases....
It was never mentioned in dialogue that Vader was a Sith.
My only point was that in order to make everything fresh and new again, they probably won't bring "the Sith" into the proceedings but focus on coming up with a compelling antagonist.
I just meant within the context of the movie itself, he wasn't.
TMBTM said:
Jonno said:
TMBTM said:
Beginning the ST with the Empire still controling the galaxy would be like killing Newt and Hicks in the opening scene of Alien 3, IMO.
As in, dramatically justified and probably resulting in a better film? Interesting point.
No, as in: making completely pointless half of the previous movie (I like Alien 3 for what it is, but I it was a mistake to begin the movie that way, IMO). That's why if it somehow "must be" an evil Empire controling the galaxy at the beginning of the ST (as someone proposed in the previous page of this thread) I suggested it to be a kind of decadent New republic rather than the same old bad guys still in charge.
To say the truth, even if I liked some of the EU novels, having the Empire being the baddies (even just fighting against the New republic) would be just okay and not very interesting to me. The problem is that the bad guys being Sith Lords would be even more whatever (unless there is a very clever plot). That's why in another thread I suggested something completely different for the threat. What if the Force itself becomes "out of control"? What if, once the "balance" achieved (by the end of ROTJ), the Force is spreading across the galaxy and everyone with very few training can now have special powers? Should the New republic be pleased of this power now being offered to the people by "the Force" itself? Or should it be controled by the New Republic? Okay... that probably sounds "smart" on paper but would maybe become another political boredom if not handle well on screen. Harf, I don't know. Give me a new cool designed Sith after all, I guess!
They're most likely gonna try and recapture the feel of the original film. Darth Vader wasn't a "Sith Lord," he was just a cool bad guy in black armor. The Force has been the one unifying aspect of the saga, so it's sure to play some sort of role in Ep7. Involving the Sith would kinda ruin the ending of RotJ, with the master Emperor being killed and the apprentice Vader being saved. That hasn't stopped the post-Jedi EU from going absolutely Sith crazy, of course, but I don't see it as a requirement to make them the main villains of the ST.
Eh, I would actually kinda want this to be TPM actually, just without the suck.
DominicCobb said:
I think the sooner someone asks LFL about their position on the OUT at this time the better. No doubt they have a position, so it'd be great to know for sure what it is. And to make it clear there are still people out here that want to see these movies.
Indeed it's surprising we haven't heard anything yet. It's been the better part of a year since the Disney deal. Maybe the plans for the OOT haven't been finalized yet and they don't want to say anything until making the grand announcement.
How appropriate that the youtube commenter put DVD in all caps. Yes, it was released on dvd, which unfortunately allows for quite a range of quality (the GOUT, for example, was an IVTC'd laserdisc master). But we still don't have the original versions on blu-ray, do we?
Mike O, there's nothing to stop Disney and Fox from working out a deal right now. They need not wait until 2020. It's only the distribution rights, anyway. If Disney didn't mind seeing a small portion of those blu-ray sales going to Fox, they could release the damn thing right now. The only real problem is the distribution rights to the '77 film are apparently Fox's FOREVER. I guess maybe that's something dating back to 1977 that didn't change when they voluntarily handed the film back over to Lucas in the mid-90's.
Whether it's Yub Nub or Galactic Celebration, I think we're meant to believe the death of the Emperor = the death of the Empire.
Neverar, that's actually reminiscent of the original plan for the ST circa 1980. Wasn't Luke gonna defeat the emperor and vader in VI and then go off and find the actual real big baddie in VII or am I remembering wrong?
There were a bunch of endings: Artoo and Threepio being given to Captain Antilles, Padme's funeral, Vader and Palps on the SD bridge, Bail Organa bringing Leia to Alderaan and Obi-Wan bringing Luke to Tatooine.
If it's been eight years since your one viewing of the movie, I can see how it'd be hard to remember if Yoda's arrival on Dagobah was actually in the movie.
When the same guy directing is also financing the movie himself, what exactly was anyone supposed to do??? George had no "higher up" to answer to.
What's funny is that I can remember not knowing Yoda was even gonna be cgi in AotC until that first teaser-for-the-teaser (the "breathing" trailer) was released. Had they even mentioned it beforehand??
Of course, I should've realized that's what they were gonna do since one of the earliest rumblings circa 2000 was McCallum hyping how we were gonna see why they call Yoda "the master." I guess the image I'd gotten in my head just wasn't one of cgi.
Considering he did the sound effects for both of JJ's Star Trek movies, I can't see him not coming back for VII.