“We felt that’s so indicative of what those saga films are. Initially, we probably will begin the film in a way that is traditional, with just the title.”Female Director
“We want to make sure that when we bring a female director in to do ‘Star Wars,’ they’re set up for success. They’re gigantic films, and you can’t come into them with essentially no experience… We want to really start to focus in on people we would love to work with and see what kinds of things they’re doing to progress up that ladder now, and then pull them in when the time is right.”Boba Fett Film
No direct quote but no update after director Josh Trank left (or fired). With the set back the Han Solo film was moved up and the third "Star Wars Story" film's focus officially remains unknown.Tone
While “Rogue One” is described as a “World War II-style adventure film,” Kennedy says the Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s Han Solo spin-off: “…moves closer to a heist or Western type feel. We’ve talked about [Frederic] Remington and those primary colors that are used in his paintings defining the look and feel of the film.”After Episode IX
“There are [possible movies] that we have been talking a lot about. But we are planning to sit down in January, since we will have had The Force Awakens released, now Rogue One, and we’ve finished shooting Episode VIII. We have enough information where we can step back a little bit and say, What are we doing? What do we feel is exciting? And what are some of the things we want to explore? That’s a conversation going on right now, too.I suspect if the every other year trilogy with stand-alones in between remains as lucrative in the long term as it currently seems it will be, Disney will insist they continue the pattern for as long as audiences show up. So the question is less "will they" and more "what story will they tell next." Personally I would just like to see the Jedi actually fight with complete mastery of the force. It has only been hinted at but mostly devolved to literal saber rattling but there has be more to their capabilities. The Extended Universe suggested it multiple times (once with the death of Anakin Solo) but the books were really the only time force abilities had been pushed beyond the narrow film scope of moving few things, moving themselves quickly, being good with lightsabers, and vaguely sensing others.
I have to honestly tell you, could we [do nothing but stand-alones]? Sure. But I don’t know. We are looking at all of that. I think [the idea of new stories] is exciting for fans. It’s certainly exciting as a filmmaker, the notion that we can explore these stories that genuinely have a beginning, middle and an end, and don’t necessarily have to tie into something specific.”
Disney has revealed the release date and special features for the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on home video. As has become the norm, a digital only version gets an early release on April 1st while the physical copy will be released on April 5. The digital version release isn't the normal two weeks but usually it costs the same as the physical which also includes a digital copy so I recommend waiting for more bang for you buck. The release will also have 8 behind the scenes featurettes and deleted scenes. Retailers will also be given their own exclusives that will range from additional bonus material to different covers and steelbooks. While temping to pre-order, I would wait until get closer to release as prices will probably become more competitive and all the store exclusives will be easier to compare. After the commercial is the press release about the special features.
Before this blog focused its attention on Star Wars, it started with the movie Cloverfield. In screening of Michael Bay's 13 Hours revealed that JJ Abrams secretly produced a sort of sequel to the movie called "10 Cloverfield Lane". The movie was filmed around two years ago by director Dan Trachtenberg with stars John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and John Gallagher Jr. Judging by the trailer, the movie occurs concurrent to and just after the Cloverfield. In a statement to Collider, JJ Abrams said "The idea came up a long time ago during production. We wanted to make it a blood relative of Cloverfield. The idea was developed over time. We wanted to hold back the title for as long as possible." Winstead offered a brief description of the film where her character wakes up in a bunker with a stranger (Goodman) saying "He tells me that basically the world is over outside because there’s been a nuclear fall-out. It does have similarity to Faults, in some ways, because you don’t know who’s telling the truth or who to believe. There’s a lot of, who’s manipulating who, and all of that. Tonally, it’s very different, but it has some of those same themes." Update: Added poster for movie.On wrapping up the trilogy
A lot of scribbling and a lot of notes thinking about the story that I want to tell"
Is she actually Rey Skywalker, daughter of Luke (Mark Hamill)? Or could she be Obi-Wan Kenobi's granddaughter?
We're going to make sure that that answer is deeply and profoundly satisfying. Rey is a character that is important in this universe, not just in the context of The Force Awakens, but in the entire galaxy. She deserves it. We'll make sure that that answer is something that feels like it was something that happened a long time ago, far away, and we're just telling you what happened.
Creating new characters
What's interesting is I'm not creating a host of new characters. I have a lot of characters that people really love that we're going to make sure are all honored. No one's going to be left behind.
Leia and Luke in Episode IX
[wants] to find new places that we can take those characters. They are icons, but they're also people that have suffered tremendous loss and challenge over the course of all these films. [Episode IX] is something that needs to honor a story that's been told over a period of 40 years. I don't want to ignore any of it, and I respect all of it. It's something I think the fan base is going to embrace.
“Ultimately the structure of Star Wars itself is as classic and tried and true as you can get. It was itself derivative of all of these things that George loved so much, from the most obvious, Flash Gordon and Joseph Campbell, to the [Akira] Kurosawa references, to Westerns — I mean, all of these elements were part of what made Star Wars.”
“I can understand that someone might say, ‘Oh, it’s a complete rip-off!’” he said. “We inherited Star Wars. The story of history repeating itself was, I believe, an obvious and intentional thing, and the structure of meeting a character who comes from a nowhere desert and discovers that she has a power within her, where the bad guys have a weapon that is destructive but that ends up being destroyed — those simple tenets are by far the least important aspects of this movie, and they provide bones that were well-proven long before they were used in Star Wars.”
“What was important for me was introducing brand new characters using relationships that were embracing the history that we know to tell a story that is new — to go backwards to go forwards. So I understand that this movie, I would argue much more than the ones that follow, needed to take a couple of steps backwards into very familiar terrain, and using a structure of nobodies becoming somebodies defeating the baddies — which is, again, I would argue, not a brand new concept, admittedly — but use that to do, I think, a far more important thing, which is introduce this young woman, who’s a character we’ve not seen before and who has a story we have not seen before, meeting the first Storm Trooper we’ve ever seen who we get to know as a human being; to see the two of them have an adventure in a way that no one has had yet, with Han Solo; to see those characters go to find someone who is a brand new character who, yes, may be diminutive, but is as far from Yoda as I think a description of a character can get, who gets to enlighten almost the way a wonderful older teacher or grandparent or great-aunt might, you know, something that is confirming a kind of belief system that is rejected by the main character; and to tell a story of being a parent and being a child and the struggles that that entails — clearly Star Wars has always been a familial story, but never in the way that we’ve told here.”