Originally published August 30, 2015. Updated November 29, 2022.
In this packed edition of The Week in Star Wars, we’ve got new footage from The Force Awakens, details on new characters, some Rogue One rumours and more…
Kicking things off this week (as we usually do) with The Force Awakens and we were treated to some new footage for the movie via a teaser trailer. The footage even includes Finn carrying a lightsaber, which is pretty interesting. And for a bit of fun, here’s a trailer for The Empire Strikes Back done in the style of The Force Awakens…
…We’ve also got a some behind the scenes photo and the BB-8 Empire cover, along with a new image of Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren, while director J.J. Abrams has been talking about the character, the First Order and Supreme Leader Snoke…
…We also found out this week that The Force Awakens will be taking over IMAX screens for an entire month. That means there are no other movies being shown on IMAX that don’t contain a title crawl. This could also help towards the movie’s projected global opening of $615 million. That’s not a typo – that’s a whopping $615 million. This of course remains to be seen, but it doesn’t seem out of the realms of possibility…
…You want Star Wars toys? Well Force Friday will be unveiling itself on September 3rd, details of which can be found here…
…Moving along to Star Wars: Episode VIII and there’s a new rumour that the movie will introduce a new “strong female character”. The website who started the rumour claims she will have strong ties to the Solo family, which conflicts with other suggestions that Daisy Ridley’s Rey is Solo’s daughter…
…Speaking of rumours, there are some rumblings that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will feature a computer generated recreation of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin. However, this rumour has come from a newspaper “source”, so take that for what it’s worth…
…Something that is actually genuine though is the above picture which was posted to the internet by Donnie Yen and reveals the different helmets from Rogue One…
…If you would like to see this writer and his fellow Flickering Myth Movie Show hosts talk about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the rest of the D23 Star Wars announcements, watch this little video here…
…No news on Han Solo: A Star Wars Story, but I’ll just leave this here:
…Humble AudioBook Bundle have teamed up with UNICEF to re-release some classic Star Wars radio dramas, which featured Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams and Anthony Daniels reprise their roles…
…Following the feature-length debut episode, Disney and Lucasfilm have announced that the second season of Star Wars Rebels will return to Disney XD on October 14th at 9.30pm ET/PT. There’s also a clip of the episode you can watch through that link too. What will the episode be about I hear you ask? “Working in tandem with the Jedi Knight Asohka Tano from The Clone Wars, the rebels will continue their assault on the Imperial Empire and the infamous Darth Vader.”
…Moving over to the video game world and we’ve got our first look at The Battle of Jakku from Star Wars Battlefront, which looks utterly epic. “There’s a David and Goliath theme to this,” says DICE Concept Artist Anton Grandert. “The epic, huge super structures of the Star Destroyers contrast against the tiny but brave Rebel soldiers fighting the Imperial forces. We wanted to portray a battle completely surrounding you, in every direction. Debris is falling from the sky, telling the story of battles above. On the surface of the planet you can see ground troops as well as X-wings, all taking part of the fight.” And before we move away from Star Wars Battlefront, we’ve had our first look at the novel spin-off Star Wars Battlefront: Twilight Company…
…To celebrate its release, a new trailer for Disney Infinity 3.0 was released, which featured a whole host of Star Wars footage. I actually saw a friend of mine post a video on his Facebook of him playing as Olaf from Frozen driving Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder. Which was… odd…
…And lastly we’ve got a couple of comic book previews for you, which includes our first look at Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: Shattered Empire #2 which seem to reveal a new character, rumoured to be Shara Bey. “Shara flies, Kes is a ground-pounder, and a very experienced one,” writer Greg Rucka said. “So, they have spent more time apart than together, and they’re in the Outer Rim world where the Imperial presence is felt, and they’re hoping that they can bring an end to this. But they’re both very tired veterans, and they come out of [the Battle of] Endor with the elation that we see in [Return of the Jedi]. ‘We’ve won. It’s over.’ — only to discover that, no it’s not. The Empire was huge.”
…And finally, we have a preview for Star Wars #9: Luke’s lightsaber has been stolen and he must retrieve it! Meanwhile, the Imperials are closing in on Han and Leia …set upon them by a mysterious woman from Han’s past!
That’s all for this week – may the Force be with you.
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
