Image Credit: LucasArts
Bad news for Star Wars game fans: Disney, which purchased the LucasFilm empire late last year for a cool $4.05 billion, has announced that it is closing its LucasArts game-making subsidiary.
The Mouse House will no longer develop LucasArts games internally and will instead license its brands, including Star Wars and Indiana Jones, to external developers.
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The Jedi are returning.
On May the Fourth, now celebrated far and wide as Star Wars Day, Entertainment Weekly’s CapeTown Film Festival will bring the greatest deep-space saga of them all back to the big screen for a special one-day event: a 30th anniversary revival of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi that takes the classic back to the site of its May 1983 world premiere, the historic Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.
We’ve scheduled four Jedi screenings (10 a.m., 2 p.m., 6 p.m., 10p.m.) on May the Fourth as well as special appearances by some famous faces and beloved characters from the Jedi universe. The anniversary and location add a special sparkle to the day, but the event is also energized with the intrigue of the future with a new planned Star Wars, which will, for the first time on screen, take the tale chronologically beyond the fiery funeral of Darth Vader, one of the most iconic villains in the history of Hollywood popcorn.
Celluloid history infuses every corner of the Egyptian Theatre, which opened in October 1922 by introducing a new Tinseltown tradition — the very first Hollywood world premiere. The storied movie palace is an amazing site for the inaugural edition of the CapeTown Film Festival, which shares its name with the EW.com section that launched early this year. The brand has already become a powerhouse presence as the hub for EW coverage of pop culture’s most vivid corners: sci-fi, superheroes, fantasy, horror, comics, video games and animation.
NEXT: How to get tickets…
George Lucas shocked the entertainment world with the announcement of a $4.05 billion deal that would give Lucasfilm –including Luke Skywalker’s home galaxy– to the Walt Disney Company. The news flash represented far more than the latest checkbook chapter in this Disney empire-building era (Pixar, Marvel and the Muppets are already part of the corporate universe) or a colossal moment in the philanthropic world (Lucas will donate most of the money to charity); the Star Wars saga will strike back in 2015 with the opening installment of a new live-action trilogy as the new team–with Jurassic Park and Lincoln producer Kathleen Kennedy Lucasfilm’s president– tries to make magic for Disney shareholders.
Where will the plot go? What characters and actors might be feeling the Force? Who will direct? We offer an inside report on the future of the franchise — as well our own Yoda-like advice about the best path to Jedi glory and the slippery route that could send the Skywalkers tumbling into a conceptual trash compactor. Plus, A-List filmmakers weigh in on the big announcement (and one of them has a bad feeling about this).
For news and analysis on the future Star Wars movies, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, on stands November 16th.
Read more:
Mark Hamill weighs in on the future of ‘Star Wars’ — EXCLUSIVE
Who should direct new ‘Star Wars’ movie? Christopher Nolan? Joss Whedon?
‘Star Wars’ reaction: Abrams, Favreau, Nolfi, and Rodriguez weigh in — EXCLUSIVE
Image Credit: Rick Rowell/Disney
Of the many images that flooded the imagination upon hearing the news that Disney was buying Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion (like, say, this), one of the most immediate was the thought of George Lucas swan diving into a massive, glittering money pit overflowing with Galactic Credits.
Think again!
In a formal statement this week, Lucas made clear that should the Disney deal pass regulatory muster and go through, he will donate the majority of that $4.05 billion to his “philanthropic endeavors” — though which ones remained unspecified. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Michael Buckner/Getty Images
Breathe, Star Wars fans, breathe. Maybe lie down a minute.
Following Tuesday’s nerd-shattering announcement that the Walt Disney Company is buying Lucasfilm, and the plan includes Star Wars: Episode VII, in early development and hoping for a 2015 release, the speculative race is on for who should direct.
Should it be Christopher Nolan, who exploded open the Batman franchise? Or Star Trek reboot master J.J. Abrams? Or Joss Whedon, riding the superhero tidal wave of this year’s The Avengers? Lucasfilm founder George Lucas, who wrote and directed the 1977 Star Wars original and the later prequels, will work as a creative consultant on Star Wars: Episode VII, so love him or hate him, he won’t be returning to helm the next film.
Here are our potential picks:
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