New Zealand Mint is thrilled to announce two major new officially licensed Star WarsTM coin collections. The Star Wars Classic collection highlights many of the great characters associated with this cultural phenomenon. The Star Wars: The Force Awakens collection shows engraved and colored illustrations of the key characters appearing in the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens film. To see and order these new Star Wars coins, click here.
Via Ew.com:
Amid all the hubbub over Star Wars: The Force Awakens last year, Bill Hader became the droid everyone was looking for when it was revealed he acted as a vocal consultant on the film for BB-8.
“J.J. Abrams called me and said, ‘Hey man, do you want to do a voice in Star Wars,’” Hader told Jimmy Kimmel about the experience on Wednesday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live. “He didn’t tell me it was the new R2-D2 character.”
Hader and actor Ben Schwartz helped bring BB-8 to life with vocal sounds – Hader’s produced using an iPad and a talk box – but the SNL vet said he wasn’t expecting any kind of credit.
“It was a giant surprise,” Hader said of seeing his name in the Star Wars credits, the first time anyone realized he had participated in the film. “I didn’t know about it until I was watching the movie and my name came up.”
New Zealand Mint is thrilled to announce two major new officially licensed Star WarsTM coin collections. The Star Wars Classic collection highlights many of the great characters associated with this cultural phenomenon. The Star Wars: The Force Awakens collection shows engraved and colored illustrations of the key characters appearing in the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens film. To see and order these new Star Wars coins, click here.
LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS and Steam (Windows PC).
Via Gqmagazine.co.uk:
You can buy a lot of things at Harrods – and that now includes a Millenium Falcon. To celebrate the release of probably the ultimate piece of Star Wars memorabilia, GQ went behind the scenes with Propshop, Pinewood-based prop manufacturer for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, to find out how you make a Millenium Falcon.
You’ve kept your Star Wars Luke Skywalker figurine since 1977 (it’s not in its box, but you can’t have everything), you have an R2D2 egg cup and even a C3PO tape dispenser. Now is the moment Star Wars memorabilia collectors have truly been waiting for. In conjunction with Propshop, Pinewood-based prop manufacturer for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, are working in conjuction with Harrods to offer Star Wars fans to own their very own piece of production quality replica merchandise.
You can now get your hands on either Kylo Ren or Rey/Luke’s lightsaber, battle your enemies with Rey’s staff or Chewbacca’s crossbow, or be the best fancy dress party guest of all time with a genuine Poe Dameron or Kylo Ren helmet – each product made by the very same craftsmen, using the very same processes as the props that are used in the film, manufactured nowhere other than at Pinewood Studios itself.
“What’s unique about these things is that they are the actual thing,” explains Propshop’s CEO James Enright. “What’s different is that they haven’t actually been shot, but I have no problem with putting these on the set and shooting them as a prop. That could go straight on the set this afternoon, because it’s the same level of quality, the same level of detail. They’ve been made the same way, they’ve been made in the studio, they’ve been made by film technicians and artists.”
Click below to read the full article.
New Zealand Mint is thrilled to announce two major new officially licensed Star WarsTM coin collections. The Star Wars Classic collection highlights many of the great characters associated with this cultural phenomenon. The Star Wars: The Force Awakens collection shows engraved and colored illustrations of the key characters appearing in the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens film. To see and order these new Star Wars coins, click here.
Via Starwars.com:
STARWARS.COM SPEAKS WITH SNAP WEXLEY HIMSELF ABOUT HIS LOVE OF STAR WARS AND BECOMING PART OF THE SAGA IN THE FORCE AWAKENS.
Greg Grunberg is the man behind Temmin “Snap” Wexley — the best recon flier in the Resistance’s Starfighter Corps, who along with Poe Dameron and his fellow X-wing pilots, helped bring down Starkiller Base in the thrilling finale to The Force Awakens.
Behind the scenes, Greg is one of the biggest Star Wars fans you’ll ever meet and, like many, stood in line with his best buddy to watch the original movie back in 1977. But how many can say that their best buddy goes by the name of J.J. Abrams? Greg can. And how many can say that 38 years later they ended up working together on a new Star Wars film? Yep, Greg can.
Greg is not only an actor, but also a producer, a philanthropist, and soon-to-be a graphic novelist with the release of his debut work, Dream Jumper, this June. StarWars.com recently had a quick chat with the man himself about his love of Star Wars, why he’s geeking out with Kevin Smith, and what he said to Abrams after witnessing THAT Force Awakens Han Solo moment.
StarWars.com: So Greg, let’s take a little stroll down memory lane. What’s your earliest Star Wars memory?
Greg Grunberg: When it all began! I turned 50 this year, so I was 11 in 1977 and my best friend in the world was J.J. Abrams. We were both just so excited to see this whole new world and to discover these new characters. I can totally get how the movie executives would have been like, “What is this garbage?!” But it was sold to us immediately!
And you know they always use a fake name for a production, because they don’t want people to know that we’re shooting Star Wars, so for The Force Awakens they used AVCO, and it was after the Avco theatre in Westwood, California, where J.J. and I both went to see the original film all those years ago! It’s just so amazing that it came full circle like it did.
StarWars.com: It really is! Okay, so who was your favorite character back then?
Greg Grunberg: Han Solo! It was almost like he was begrudgingly going through the movie. It’s just a very relatable character; the guy who doesn’t want to do things by the book and who kind of just always gets them wrong but gets them right, you know, doing it his way. I just think Harrison Ford as Han Solo is brilliant and I immediately gravitated towards him.
Click below to read the full article.
New Zealand Mint is thrilled to announce two major new officially licensed Star WarsTM coin collections. The Star Wars Classic collection highlights many of the great characters associated with this cultural phenomenon. The Star Wars: The Force Awakens collection shows engraved and colored illustrations of the key characters appearing in the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens film. To see and order these new Star Wars coins, click here.
Via Yahoo.com:
DISNEY
It seems like it was released a lifetime ago, but Star Wars: The Force Awakens isn’t even seven months old. Episode VII came out on December 18, 2015, and was greeted rapturous reviews that washed away the sins of the toxic prequels. It also broke numerous box office records, including 3D, IMAX, worldwide opening, Christmas day, fastest to $100 million, fastest to $150 million, fastest to $200 million, all the way up to fastest to $500 million. The Force Awakens is the highest grosser for all of ’em — including, most impressively, all-time domestic box office, with a staggering $936 million (that’s $176 million more than second place Avatar) — but all good things must come to an end. After 168 days, Episode VII has finally left theaters.
The Force Awakens made $119,119,282 on December 18, when it came out, according to Box Office Mojo. On May 30, the movie’s final day in theaters, it pulled in another $1,450. Assuming the cost of a movie ticket is $11 (which is probably high, considering there are a lot of dollar theaters taking down a lot of BB-8 posters right now), that means 131 people finally got around to seeing Episode VII, or saw it for something like the 87th time. It’s one or the other.
More fun final day facts: It played in 20 theaters (all in Wyoming, I imagine), and was still one of the country’s 50 highest grossing movies for the week, slightly below Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead and slightly above Meet the Blacks.
I’d say Disney made a wise investment. It’s a shame they’re not making any more Star Wars movies, though. Best not to mess with a good thing, right?
Via theweek.co.uk:
Star Wars actor Daisy Ridley has spoken about the dramatic climax of The Force Awakens, in which the much-loved character Han Solo, played by Harrison Ford, dies at the hands of his own son.
In an interview with The Big Issue, Ridley, who plays newcomer Rey, said she understands why many Star Wars fans were so affected by the scene.
“People die so awfully every day that if you experienced every grief the whole world would be a dark, dark place. So many awful things happened last year and Han Solo dying, which was one of the last moments of the year, is some weird way of people experiencing that,” she said.
“People are weighed down by awful things that are happening and what they see on the news. If everybody puts a piece of themselves into Han Solo and Han Solo dies – in the cinema, where it’s dark – you can express it and it alleviates some of the pain. His death is obviously not as important as actual lives that are lost but people probably use it as some kind of carrier for the grief.”
Ridley has just finished filming the as-yet-unnamed sequel to The Force Awakens in Ireland and is on her way to the next location, Star Wars News reports.
New Zealand Mint is thrilled to announce two major new officially licensed Star WarsTM coin collections. The Star Wars Classic collection highlights many of the great characters associated with this cultural phenomenon. The Star Wars: The Force Awakens collection shows engraved and colored illustrations of the key characters appearing in the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens film. To see and order these new Star Wars coins, click here.
Oscar Isaac shuts his eyes tight, guitar in hand, and the world goes away. Which is convenient, because the world keeps presenting him with unwelcome facts, here in his 37th year: Turns out that if you’re a dreamily handsome actor who delivers fierce, incandescent, once-in-a-generation performances worthy of Pacino and De Niro, and then takes big roles in Star Wars and X-Men movies, you will become famous, and people will start calling you a movie star. Who knew? “I’m an actor, not a star,” he’ll say, bristling politely, if probed too hard on the subject of his rise. “I don’t really know what you mean when you say ‘star,’ ‘movie star,’ that stuff.”
Isaac never planned for any of this – never planned for much of anything, really – and he’s trying to keep it all out of his head. He’s obsessed with craft, indifferent to celebrity, private by instinct. The money is nice, not that he’s spending much of it, but the only part of success he truly covets is having his pick of roles. He’s bemused by the fervent female fan base he’s acquired, with bloggers calling him “the Internet’s boyfriend.” “The Internet never struck me as being into monogamous relationships,” he says with a small laugh. “It’s very promiscuous, the Internet.” (The Internet almost dumped him last year when an old picture emerged of him wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the cover of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. “I liked the design,” he says. “I didn’t think wearing the shirt was saying I agreed with all her politics. I’m not a libertarian!”)
Isaac still lives in the same one-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he bought before his career’s recent uptick. He doesn’t own a car (“You know how much a garage is? It’s like paying rent!”). He did at least renovate his Brooklyn place, and purchased homes for his mom and sister. He’ll consider a larger apartment if he has kids, or, as he puts it, “if I duplicate or replicate.”
Click below to read the full article.
Image via Rollingstone.com
Via Thegaurdian.com:
Actor and writer reveals good-natured battle against studio-ordered weight loss in new documentary about relationship with mother Debbie Reynolds
Carrie Fisher has revealed how the makers of Star Wars: The Force Awakens sent a personal trainer to her home to weigh her, remove unhealthy food from her cupboards and persuade her to exercise.
Fisher was at the Cannes film festival this weekend for Saturday’s screening of the HBO documentary Bright Lights, about her relationship with her mother, the 84-year-old Hollywood icon Debbie Reynolds.
The film, directed by The Cove producer Fisher Stevens, shows the 59-year-old actor being persuaded to perform lunges and use a cross trainer.
While working out on a treadmill, the actor wonders if she will be retrospectively thinned down by Star Wars’ makers if her character Leia Organa should die and return as a “Force ghost”. She asks: “My question is, if you die when you’re fat, are you a fat ghost, or do they go back to a more flattering time?”
At one point in the film, the fitness professional empties Fisher’s kitchen of unhealthy food and drinks. But Fisher reportedly fought back against the fitness regime, buying cans of cola and refusing to do lunges.
Bright Lights features footage of Fisher when she was a little girl, as well as archive material highlighting her mother’s years of Hollywood fame. The actor and comic previously riffed on the relationship for her 1987 semi-autobiographical novel Postcards from the Edge, which was later adapted by the author for the acclaimed 1990 film starring Meryl Streep, who received an Oscar-nomination for the role.
Fisher reprised her role as Leia Organa in JJ Abrams’ blockbuster space opera The Force Awakens last year. She will return as the Resistance leader in the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VIII.
In December the actor and writer revealed she felt pressured to lose 16kg (2st 7lb) for her return to Star Wars, directing criticism at the “insane” image obsession of Hollywood. “They don’t want to hire all of me – only about three-quarters! Nothing changes, it’s an appearance-driven thing,” she told Good Housekeeping magazine. “I’m in a business where the only thing that matters is weight and appearance. That is so messed up. They might as well say get younger, because that’s how easy it is.”
Via Comicbookmovie.com:
Prior to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, some fans were all but sure they had figured out the identity of Andy Serkis’ Supreme Leader Snoke. Now, a Lucasfilm story executive is shooting down the theory…
Besides trying to decipher the parentage of Rey in the most recent chapter of the Star Wars saga, fans have been puzzled as to just who Supreme Leader Snoke is. Little is known about the character outside of him having suffered some grave injuries, his leadership of the First Order, and his training of Kylo Ren. One of the most popular theories prior to the film’s release was that Snoke was really Darth Plagueis, the Sith Lord who trained Emperor Palpatine. The character is believed to be dead, murdered by Palpatine, but fans who held this theory claimed he must have survived with grave injuries. This certainly would have been an interesting path, tying the saga back to the much-maligned prequels in a way that helped to serve the story.
With The Force Awakens giving us no clear indication either way on Snoke’s true identity, fan speculation has continued rampantly, despite denials from J.J. Abrams and Andy Serkis, who portrays the character via motion capture. Now, Pablo Hidalgo, who is the Creative Executive of the Lucasfilm Story Group, has engaged with some fans on Twitter and has seemingly shot down the rumour as false. “…he was said to possess the ability to keep loved ones from dying. Not himself. His apprentice killed him.” Of course, there’s always room for denial and misdirection when it comes to Star Wars; secrecy was a big deal when it came to stifling plot leaks from The Force Awakens. However, Hidalgo was pretty adamant that there is no misdirection when it comes to Plagueis. “I said Sidious killed Plagueis. He killed him. Killed. As in ‘to kill’. Like, there was killing.”
All in all, that seems pretty definitive. Do you think Snoke has a familiar identity, or is he just a new character with sinister motivations?
New Zealand Mint is thrilled to announce two major new officially licensed Star WarsTM coin collections. The Star Wars Classic collection highlights many of the great characters associated with this cultural phenomenon. The Star Wars: The Force Awakens collection shows engraved and colored illustrations of the key characters appearing in the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens film. To see and order these new Star Wars coins, click here.
