In case you missed it, here’s a special edition of The Week in Star Wars
with a tribute to the career of Carrie Fisher
Your latest edition of The Week in Star Wars has an update on Leia in Episode IX, Rogue One’s box office dominance, casting new from Han Solo and more…
Let’s kick things off this week by looking at the box office dominance of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which has now passed $800 million worldwide. It’s got some tough competition this weekend, but it’s currently sitting (at press time) at $461 million domestically and $844 million worldwide. At this rate it will overtake Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and The Secret Life of Pets in the 2016 box office, but it won’t likely reach The Jungle Book‘s $966 million. However, it will mean that Disney hold the top five positions of the worldwide gross of the year, which is pretty good news for the House of Mouse…
…Update: Well, it’s now reached $900 million…
…But even with all of this good news, Rogue One can’t escape people talking about the re-shoots and their effect on the final product. Speaking in an interview this week, editors John Gilroy and Colin Goudie said that it was mostly around fleshing out characters and the final act (something that we had reported on last year). You can read the comments here…
…Speaking of things that might have changed, a few images were released this week that hint at possible deleted scenes, which you can see here…
…Something else that was heavily discussed was the lack of an opening crawl, which director Gareth Edwards revealed he actually wanted before Disney said, ‘no’. “Probably like six months before we were filming we were in a meeting, and they talked about not having an opening crawl, because these are standalone films, not part of the sagas,” he said. “And if I’m honest, there was an initial kind of like, ‘whaaaa? I want the crawl!” You can read the rest of his comments here…
…Edwards also spoke about Darth Vader’s introduction in the movie, and his desires to bring the character back to his Empire Strikes Back terror. Read his comments about the bacta tank here…
…The official Star Wars Facebook released a 360° video which sees Edwards taking us behind-the-scenes of the Jedha marketplace sequence; watch that video here…
…Let’s jump over to the next Star Wars Story movie, which will focus on the young life of Han Solo before he becomes part of the Rebel Alliance. It was reported this week by Variety that Disney are in early discussions with Woody Harrelson to take on the role of Solo’s mentor, presumably a role similar to the one he had in The Hunger Games franchise. Just after that news came out, The Hollywood Reporter tweeted out that before Harrelson they had eyed former Batman Christian Bale for the part. With the film set to shoot fairly soon, we can expect to see an official announcement of this news in the near future…
…Moving over to Star Wars: Episode VIII, which got a new logo this week, Adam Driver has been speaking about what we can expect from Kylo Ren this time around. “Even though it’s very much a blockbuster movie, and I’m aware of that, there was no taking that for granted and that we were forced to be general [in Star Wars: The Force Awakens],” he said. “There was a lot of plot points that we knew were operating in the first one, that we get to explain more in the second one, that kind of make both of them make sense.” Read more of his comments on Ren’s humanity here…
…Following the sad news of Carrie Fisher’s passing, it was reported this week that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and director Colin Trevorrow have met to discuss how to handle Leia Organa in Star Wars: Episode IX. According to sources, one idea is have a CGI version of Fisher, similar to Peter Cushing’s Tarkin in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, while the other option is to re-write the story. However by doing so they will need to re-work and re-shoot scenes from Star Wars: Episode VIII which is now in post-production. It will be interesting to keep an eye on this story as it progresses, considering the backlash Disney and Lucasfilm received for using Cushing’s likeness in Rogue One…
…Speaking of Cushing and CGI Leia, our resident film grump Anghus Houvouras wrote this op-ed piece ‘About those terrible final shots in Rogue One and The Force Awakens‘…
…Moving over to Star Wars Rebels, which kicked off again yesterday, you can re-watch the epic trailer for it here, check out some images here and read Chris Cooper’s thoughts on the midseason premiere here…
…And finally, here’s your comic book preview for the week in Star Wars: Poe Dameron #10: Poe and Threepio’s covert mission comes to an end! Can they escape with their informant intact? Or will Terex’s past come back to haunt them?
That’s all for this week – may the Force be with you.
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth and the co-host of The Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @ThisisLukeOwen and read his weekly feature The Week in Star Wars.
Originally published January 8, 2017. Updated November 30, 2022.
