Movie and TV News
The Phantom Menace is hitting theaters once again on May 3rd, 2024 to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Also revealed is a beautiful 25th anniversary poster by Matt Ferguson. More details over at Empire Magazine.
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During an earnings call with Disney CEO Bob Iger, it was revealed that the upcoming Jon Favreau-directed Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu movie will be released on May 22, 2026, with filming set to begin June 17, 2024. We also have our first basic logo revealed for the movie.
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File this under “headlines you never expected to read”… but Gina Carano is suing Disney and Lucasfilm with the financial backing of Elon Musk. Musk had offered to help anyone who got fired over voicing their opinions on X / Twitter previously and apparently he was serious about it. Click through for a discussion!
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Carl Weathers died peacefully in his sleep on Wednesday, February 1st, according to his family. The 76-year-old actor was primarily known for his role as Apollo Creed in Rocky, he played the character in the first four of the Rocky movies. In the 1980s Carl starred alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator, one of his better known movies from the 1990s includes the Adam Sandler comedy Happy Gilmore and he would make yet another appearance in a more comedic role as a fictionalized version of himself on the tv show Arrested Development in the early 2000s. Carl rose to prominence again in recent years when he received his first ever Emmy nomination for his role as Greef Karga in The Mandalorian, the breakaway hit show on Disney+, in later seasons he would also direct a few episodes.
It remains to be seen what that means for The Mandalorian, after Gina Carano as Cara Dune, Carl’s Greef Karga is the second major recurring character who can no longer appear on the show or in the movie.
Starwars.com has a statement from Jon Favreau:
I am heartbroken by this devastating loss. He was a hero from my childhood who I was lucky enough to meet and then had the amazing good fortune to work with. He had the energy and curiosity of a young man paired with the wisdom that his rich life and career afforded him. My heart goes out to his family and countless admirers.
Let’s all remember Carl. May he rest in peace!
Carl Weathers as Greef Karga
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The Bad Batch Season 3 debuts February 21st with a 3-episode premiere. Check out the full trailer and Teaser Poster after the jump!
Tags: Promotional Poster, Teaser Posters, The Bad Batch (Disney+ Series)
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Ok, you know the drill, get your salt out, take a few healthy doses… and let’s all sit down to listen to the latest Lucasfilm rumors: according to a scooper not usually known for Star Wars leaks and scoops the Rey movie is now delayed … indefinitely. This according to a report by “World of Reel”. Who, you may ask… according to Star Wars scooper Bespin Bulletin World of Reel, while not known for scoops about big Star Wars projects, usually covers news about smaller projects and is very often absolutely right. So there may be some veracity to the claims. But as usual, remember those are rumors and need to be treated as such. And reports that claim to debunk this rumor already exist.
However, it might explain Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s appearance on CNN two weeks ago, because even back then some people speculated this can only mean the project is in big trouble and Obaid-Chinoy wants to create pressure by pointing out that it’s high time a woman shapes the narrative in a galaxy far, far away. But at least according to the latest rumor it was all in vain! Click through for a few more details!
You are about the enter the Star Wars Rumor Zone!
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Even though Hollywood awards are mostly pointless exercises, it can still mean something if you are recognized for your efforts, especially if you are not in the spotlight most of the time. The big winner this year was the drama series “Succession” which beat Andor, which was also nominated in the “Outstanding Drama Series” category. Some joker at Lucasfilm also entered Obi-Wan Kenobi in the “Outstanding Limited Or Anthology Series” category, of course it did not win, a series titled “Beef” won instead.
But Star Wars did win two Emmys last night and one award went to someone who is definitely not in the spotlight most of the time! Click through for all the details!
Lateef Crowder now has an Emmy, pictured here on set with director Bryce Dallas Howard in a season 1 episode, Howard actually never worked even once with Pedro Pascal when she filmed that episode and Crowder and his colleague Brandon Wayne were the men in the armor.
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In case you didn’t read the whole article from today’s The Mandalorian & Grogu movie announcement, Starwars.com also confirmed that Ahsoka Season Two is currently under development by Dave Filoni.
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It looks like rumors were true and The Mandalorian and Grogu will continue on the big screen. Head over to Starwars.com for the story. The movie goes into production this year and be directed by Jon Favreau.
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You may wonder why I would want to talk about the upcoming (as of now) Rey movie “New Jedi Order” again, well, the reason for that is simple. For some inexplicable (or not) reason the director of the Rey movie, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, made a somewhat puzzling appearance on CNN on New Year’s Eve where she briefly talked about the Star Wars movie scheduled for release in 2026. CNN treated that almost as if it’s anything newsworthy, even though she was announced as the director back in April 2023, in fact, it is very strange and peculiar why Obaid-Chinoy made this appearance, doing PR work for a movie that still doesn’t have a finished script. So what is going on here? But what really irked quite a few Star Wars fans is what Obaid-Chinoy had to say about her directing job. Click through for the full story and a discussion!
Screenshot of two audience members watching New Jedi Order. Acquired from the future via wormhole time travel.
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Reputable leaker Jeff Sneider (who has a really good track record – one of his more recent scoops was that Damon Lindelof is working on a Star Wars movie, which turned out to be 100% correct) has dropped quite the surprise in his Hot Mic podcast. According to Sneider The Mandalorian season 4 will not be released on Disney+, instead it will be turned into a movie and it will even be the first new Star Wars movie to be released! Click through for more!
You are about the enter the Star Wars Rumor Zone!
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With the year drawing to a close and with things like Ahsoka and The Mandalorian season 3 behind us the question is what is next for Star Wars? We now have some more details about what will be next for Star Wars on Disney+ in 2024 based on an official press release. And there is also some news about the Rey movie (what could very well be the Star Wars version of The Marvels). Click through for the details!
On set photo of The Skeleton Crew – source: Bespin Bulletin
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Dave Filoni is further climbing up the ranks at Lucasfilm. Today it was announced that he has been promoted to Chief Creative Officer. What that means is that from now on Dave Filoni will no longer be a mere advisor who is maybe brought on when a project has already been in development for a while, Filoni will now work much closer together with Kathleen Kennedy and he will be involved with all upcoming projects already at the inception phase and thus have a direct impact on the early development of new projects. Click through for more!
Dave Filoni with mandatory cowboy hat at Star Wars Celebration 2023
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Entertainment Tonight published an interview with Taika Waititi yesterday and in it Waititi was of course asked about his Star Wars movie, which was announced all the way back in 2020. What did Waititi say? Click through for the full story!
The state of Star Wars movies in 2023
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The final episode of Ahsoka has been added to the Nielsen streaming charts! How did the episode perform? The Ahsoka finale also competed with the first episode of Loki season 2 – which franchise had the upper hand? Star Wars or Marvel? And how does the Ahsoka finale compare to all the other major season finals we’ve had on Disney+ thus far? Click through for all the details!
Shin shows Captain Marvel who’s the boss on Peridea
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A little later than usual, because Hasbro stole the spotlight in the past few days with things like a repacked Finn for the Vintage Collection, here are the latest Nielsen streaming charts numbers! The penultimate Ahsoka episode was added in the last update. So how is the series doing? Ahsoka gained about one million views with its 7th episode! Click through for more!
A deleted dialogue from Ahsoka episode 7 (click to enlarge so you can read the dialogue)
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It’s time yet again to look at the Nielsen Streaming Charts! How is Ahsoka faring with episode six added to the charts? Not all that much has changed actually! Click through for more!
The Sabine and Ezra reunion scene we should have had instead
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And it’s time yet again to see how Ahsoka performed on Disney+. Nielsen added the 5th episode which included a lengthy flashback (kind of) to the Clone Wars era with a young Anakin Skywalker and his teenage padawan Ahsoka. Now the question is if this major guest appearance would boost the ratings. Click through to find out more!
The much better Ahsoka
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I was a bit busy the past few days so I get to report the latest Nielsen numbers for Ahsoka a bit later than usual. And while some people may have you believe the ratings for the show are a complete disaster they are not really. But they are certainly not great either. So how did Ahsoka in week 3 perform? Click through for the important numbers!
In Ahsoka’s 4th episode Shin put on her Neko ears and went to the local Disneyland on Peridia to unwind from a long day of intense staring, glowering and lightsaber dueling. She had a great day!
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The Ahsoka season finale dropped last night! Was is a worthy conclusion to the season? Was it fun? Was it any good? Well…………………. it depends. Do you posess the talent to switch off your brain at will? Then “yes”. But if your brain refuses to cease functioning while watching Star Wars? Then probably “no”. Either way, there are many things to discuss, so click through to read my spoiler review for the Ahsoka season finale and let’s discuss it all!
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Nielsen have updated their streaming charts and added the third Ahsoka episode! So how did the third episode (or the show as a whole) do in its second week? It did “ok”. Click through for more!
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Last week I said episode six of Ahsoka, “Far Far Away”, is some of the best Star Wars on Disney+. Fast forward one week and episode seven is in many ways the counterpoint, it is in some ways the worst Star Wars on Disney+. How is this possible? Why is Ahsoka so terribly uneven? Now on the surface the current episode is fun, it has lots of ‘splosions, lightsaber action, space action, it has a swift pace and yet even more memberberry cameos. On the surface it’s never boring. But when you look behind the curtain you find there isn’t some Oz, there is nothing, just a vacuum of nothingness. The plot of this episode is plain stupid when you think about it all for just one second. No other way to put it. So click here to read my spoiler review for “Dreams and Madness” and let’s discuss the penultimate Ahsoka season 1 episode!
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Nielsen have updated their weekly streaming charts today and it is the first time they include Ahsoka. As you remember Ahsoka dropped two episodes on the same night, and Disney even changed their release strategy for the series, releasing the episodes at 9 pm in the prime time slot, contrary to all of the previous shows where the episodes dropped in the middle of the night. So how did the show do? Not good. Not good at all actually. Click through for all the details!
Boom….
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“Far Far Away” is in some ways the best Star Wars Disney+ has to offer outside of Andor. Ahsoka was off to a really rough start but episode six is a huge improvement once again, and one reason may be that Ahsoka herself is completely absent from this episode, other than for the first two minutes. So the episode can instead focus on the interesting characters of Baylan, Sabine and Shin and we also get the entrance of Thrawn and the return of Ezra of course. It turns out “Far Far Away” even attempts to and succeeds in recreating some of the original Star Wars magic. And we learn why the Jedi should really die, something that many people didn’t like at all when Luke said it in The Last Jedi. But after this, and the previous episode, you may understand why this would actually be a good idea, when we talk about how the Jedi really were. So there is lots to talk about, click through to read my spoiler review and let’s discuss the latest Ahsoka episode!
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You may have faint memories of Kathleen Kennedy announcing a Lando series several years ago (it was the event at which she also claimed the Kenobi series has been fully written, before the writer was fired and they rewrote the entire show from scratch). Then we heard literally nothing for ages… and people were wondering if the series was just cancelled without ever acknowledging it. Then the person supposed to write the series gave an interview not too long ago and complained about how he had not heard from Lucasfilm in over a year and he wondered if he’s too gay or black for Lucasfilm (it’s the guy who wrote and directed the massive Haunted Mansion remake flop, so Lucasfilm ignoring him may have other reasons). Probably to spite him after these inane comments Lucasfilm announced literally on the next day or so that Lando has a new writing team: Donald Glover, who played Lando in Solo, and his brother Stephen.
And now Stephen said in a podcast yesterday that Lando is no longer intended to be a show, but a movie… and Variety later ran their own story with official confirmation from Lucasfilm – to which I can only say… REALLY NOW? Click through for more!
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