Star Wars

And now, the story of a big studio movie that lost its creative team, and the one director who had no choice but to keep it all together — it’s Han Solo’s re-hiring process.

We’re still reeling from the news that Phil Lord and Chris Miller have walked off (or been fired from) the Han Solo spinoff Star Wars anthology film, but this movie has a release date in less than a year, and it is coming to theaters, with Lord/Miller or not. Although the news that the directing duo was not finishing Han Solo was announced today, the search for a replacement was already underway. Deadline says that Lucasfilm’s top pick at the moment is Ron Howard, the Oscar-winning filmmaker of movies like Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, and The Da Vinci Code:

Be sure to watch it until the end!

When it comes to the movies, these are lucky times we’re living in. A new Star Wars movie opens this December with the return of new favorite – Rey, Finn, and Poe – and old favorites – Luke and Leia. But even for those who aren’t deeply professed fans of the galaxy far far away, Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi has a little something for you too; Laura Dern with purple hair, and Benicio Del Toro, looking as cool as ever.

One of the hot rumors leading up to this past year’s Star Wars Celebration was that Lucasfilm would announce a standalone Obi-Wan Kenobi film. With Rogue One: A Star Wars Story surpassing even the most optimistic expectations  —  and the casting of Han Solo dominating the news cycle for months on end  —  the continuing adventures of Obi-Wan seemed like a no-brainer for the studio. So fans were a little bummed when neither the announcement nor Ewan McGregor were present that weekend. Had something change since the last time McGregor said he’d be interested in the role?

When he was still in charge of Lucasfilm, George Lucas liked to say that Star Wars was like poetry; it rhymed, in a cycle of repetition. There was Return of the Jedi, and then many years later (or some years before, depending on how you look at things) there was Revenge of the Sith...

I have interviewed a lot of actors and directors. When I tell people I interviewed someone famous, their first question is always the same: “Were they nice?” It’s usually hard to say; you don’t get much time with these filmmakers and they’re typically on their best behavior because they want you to write nice things about them. Interviewing a director is like being on a reality show: I’m not there to make friends.

May the 4th be with you!

For a guy whose entire acting career has been overshadowed by one role he played decades ago, Mark Hamill’s got a pretty good attitude. He loves Star Wars, and what’s more, he loves how much the people who love Star Wars love Star Wars. A regular fixture at conventions and other fan events, Hamill regularly gets in on the fun and mingles with his adoring public. And in a new video from Lucasfilms’ charity arm Force for Change, he gives a handful of diehard devotees the surprise of their lives.

For all the hype surrounding Star Wars: The Last Jedi in the past month, we still haven’t seen very much in the way of new looks for our favorite characters. Nearly every shot of the trailer and officially sanctioned image from Lucasfilm has shown heroes like Rey and Finn and villains like Phasma and Kylo Ren as we saw them last in The Force Awakens. Aside from new toy packaging and the rare t-shirt design, there hasn’t even been very little headway into different haircuts for these characters. That changes today however, due largely to Star Wars Battlefront II’s pre-order materials. Thanks to Gamestop, we now have a bit of an idea what Rey and Kylo Ren will look like in the upcoming eighth episode of the Star Wars saga proper.

When Lucasfilm initially announced Star Wars: Episode IX, the tentative plan was to release it in theaters on May 23, 2019 — that date was never confirmed, however, and when the studio shifted their releases to December (with the exception of the young Han Solo spinoff), everyone just assumed that it was only a matter of time before Episode IX’s release date was changed, too. That’s definitely not the case, as Disney and Lucasfilm have announced a metric Jabba-ton of new release dates, officially confirming the final film in their Star Wars trilogy for May 24, 2019.

Unlike the previous Obi-Wan Kenobi  —  sorry, Alec Guinness  —  Ewan McGregor has long been excited about the prospect of returning for more Star Wars movies, telling Empire Magazine last October that he was the “right age” to make two more movies as the beloved character. While fans were sometimes unimpressed by the prequels, McGregor’s winning performance as the young Jedi was one of the highlights of the film, leading fans to clamor for a standalone Kenobi movie while McGregor was still the right age.

For a franchise about slightly sketchy space crooks and intergalactic military types, the Star Wars films are almost conspicuously free of profanity. It makes sense from a business perspective — keeping the series PG-13 ensures that it’ll be open to a wider array of viewers — and yet the absence of cussing feels especially noticeable in a movie starring the famously coarse-tongued Carrie Fisher. The closest the series came to a four-letter word was Han Solo getting dissed as a “scruffy nerf-herder,” but a recently discovered cache of lost footage from the original 1977 Star Wars is going to change all that in short order.

Shooting a movie’s not like performing a play. The theatrical process is primal, all rooted in emotion and immersion within the fictional moment. Production on a feature film requires far more on a technical level, to the point where actors will be ordered to pick up a spoon in the exact same way ten times, just to be safe. (David Fincher famously went through one hundred takes to nail the opening breakup in his magnum opus The Social Network.) For the typical actor, most of filmmaking is waiting around for stuff to happen — but that’s far less tiresome when you get to hang out with Carrie Fisher between calls of “ACTION!”

Walt Disney World and Disneyland already have a few Star Wars-based attractions, including the Star Wars Launch Bay, where you can interact with characters from the movies like BB-8, and Star Tours: The Adventure Continues, a simulator ride that brings guests on a journey at lightspeed through various corners of the galaxy far, far away. But that’s nothing compared to what’s coming: A full “Star Wars Land” coming to theme parks on both coasts, which will boast some of the most advanced theme-park technology to date.

One of the most debated plots points of Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been the lineage of Daisy Ridley’s Rey. Could she be the daughter of Luke Skywalker? The daughter of Obi-One Kenobi? The daughter of… actually, come to think of it, those are the only two human Force-users we’ve met since the original Star Wars movie, so it’s either a very familiar face or someone totally out of the blue. Regardless, fans have now spent two years not knowing something about their favorite character, and that’s a long, long time for knowledge to be withheld in 2017. They’re ready for answers.

While fans from around the world have gathered to share their love of Star Wars at this year’s Star Wars Celebration, there has been one sobering element to the festivities. The loss of Carrie Fisher has been felt at every level of the convention, from Thursday’s bittersweet memorial video put together by Lucasfilm to the sadness felt while Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson shared his behind-the-scenes footage from the set. And since this is a convention of all things Star Wars, fans have also speculated about the role the actress might play in the next film. Is there a place for Fisher in Star Wars: Episode 9?

Fans are never satisfied. Here we are, finally enjoying the first batch of footage from Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and we’re already wondering about Star Wars: Episode 9 and beyond. The resurgence of Luke Skywalker in particular has us wondering a bit about the franchise’s endgame. The Star Wars movies have always been tied to the emotional journeys of one father and one son; can this universe maintain a new Skywalker narrative after the main one is complete? Or will Star Wars: Episode 9 bring this chapter in the Star Wars universe to a close?

The first trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi debuted this morning, and…wow, we’re gonna need a minute (or 20) to process, especially with Luke Skywalker’s suspenseful voiceover. We were promised we’d get to hear Mark Hamill speak, and speak he does — throughout most of the trailer, ending with a fairly chilling line: “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” But what does that mean?! Is Rey the eponymous last Jedi, or is Luke? That’s something we probably won’t know until December. For now, join us as we try to break it all down and take a closer look at the most thrilling (and possibly telling) moments with GIFs and screenshots from the trailer.

Finally, the wait is over and the very first footage of Star Wars: The Last Jedi has arrived! If you haven’t already passed out or exploded into tiny specs of dust, congrats!