Caffeinated Clint
There’s been quite a few “Star Wars” related stories over the past few days, let’s play catch-up.
EA and Disney team-up on “Star Wars” video games
The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) and Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) today announced a new multi-year exclusive licensing agreement to develop and publish globally new games based on Star Wars characters and storylines.
Under the agreement, EA will develop and publish new Star Wars titles for a core gaming audience, spanning all interactive platforms and the most popular game genres, while Disney will retain certain rights to develop new titles within the mobile, social, tablet and online game categories.
“This agreement demonstrates our commitment to creating quality game experiences that drive the popularity of the Star Wars franchise for years to come,” said John Pleasants, Co-President of Disney Interactive. “Collaborating with one of the world’s premier game developers will allow us to bring an amazing portfolio of new Star Wars titles to our fans around the world.”
“Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe,” said EA Labels President Frank Gibeau. “Three of our top studios will fulfill that dream, crafting epic adventures for Star Wars fans. DICE and Visceral will produce new games, joining the BioWare team which continues to develop for the Star Wars franchise. The new experiences we create may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay.”
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed
Sir Ben Kingsley as Yoda’s cousin.
Total Film asked a number of actors, including Emma Stone and Nicolas Cage, whether they’d be interested in doing one of the new “Star Wars” films. Not surprisingly, considering how beloved that original trilogy was, most of the thesps say they’d jump at the chance to wield a lightsaber – in fact, the only one that doesn’t seem too keen is “Dark Knight Rises” star Aaron Eckhart, but only because he’s not into science-fiction.
Episode VII to begin filming next year
Bryan Burk, J.J Abrams’ right-hand man at Bad Robot Productions, says the next “Star Wars” will film next year.
“We’re progressing on a schedule to hopefully begin next year, or the beginning of next year, and the location is still kind of floating around in the air all depending on script and a whole bunch of other issues. As I just said, everything is kind of a free-flowing thing, and when we feel like the story level on this script and everything is really coming together and schedules are all working and pieces line up, we prowl ahead, and Star Wars will be no different.” (Collider)
Mark Hamill, we love you!
Suggesting he wasn’t a fan of the prequels, original trilogy star Mark Hamill – expected to reprise his role as Luke Skywalker in the new series – says he hopes the new films get that balance of practical effect and CGI right.
At EW’s Capetown Film Festival, Hamill said : “There’s nothing wrong with CGI, but I think you have to have a balance because the camera perceives the width and the depth and the weight of a miniature or a model.” He just said he isn’t a fan of the one guy surrounded by greenscreen look and told Kennedy that he’d hate for these new movies to “look like Roger Rabbit.”
Hamill, confirming his involvement, as well as Carrie Fisher’s (he’s heard Harrison Ford is back, too), said he’ll be fighting to make this movie what we fans need it to be.
“I’m one of you, I feel like you’re one of us. I’ll be in there fighting and trying to be as honest as I can be about what I think it is made these movies so special in the first place. It always starts with the script and that’s why I’m so encouraged by Michael Arndt’s involvement because I respect his writing so much. He’s a big fan of these movies, so hopefully we can make something that doesn’t make everyone want to find us, cut off our heads and throw it right in our faces.” AICN
Johnny Boy, will you come back?
JJ Abrams expects that “Star Wars” legend John Williams will return to do the music for “Episode VII”.
“I believe that, going forward, John Williams will be doing that film, because he was there long before I was.” (CBM)
