Happy Holidays, Star Wars fans! It’s now time for our 20th weekly recap, and we’re 10 days past the release of The Force Awakens, and now a little less than a year from the release of Rogue One. Have you made your New Year’s resolution yet? We’re here to bring you the latest in Star Wars news from the galactic core to all the way in the outer rim. Let’s get started…
1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens has just passed 1 billion dollars! Read more about it here.
davestrrr: Nice. I’m not surprised at all. I’ve been telling my non-Star Wars fan friends that this was going to happen. I have every expectation that this will be the highest grossing film ever.
mazlow01: They are on pace to hit 2 billion at min. I don’t know it if it will hit 3 but a boy can hope. Its also on pace to be the largest US release ever. Star Wars baby, its back.
2. JJ has just confirmed that we won’t get an Extended Release of The Force Awakens.
davestrrr: This may be true, but we’ll most certainly get the deleted scenes, or at least some of them, in the Blueray version that will be out soon. This has been the standard for past Star Wars films, so I kind of expect the same thing here.
mazlow01: So basically JJ is going to make me edit my own Extended version. My wife is not going to be happy with me for a bout a month come April.
3. The Blueray will be available April 5th. MSW has an article on this here.
davestrrr: To me, this seems a bit strange to announce the date already. With such a huge film, there is a chance that it could still be in the theatre at some places even in April. If it were me, I would wait on announcing the date, but maybe this is the way things go now. They probably have contracts with Redbox all lined up etc. and stuff like this is just how it goes.
mazlow01: I suspect this will be pushed back a couple of weeks.
4. The Inspiration of Maz Kanata is revealed! Head over to Palisadian-Post for the scoop.
davestrrr: That woman is so cute! I can totally see the resemblance between her and Maz. We now know where the name “Rose” came from, and this seems to confirm all those early reports about this being a code name. I know MSW reported on this a long time ago, and we now know that these old reports were legit.
mazlow01: I figured JJ was taking real life inspiration just like George did. And once again MSW is right.
https://twitter.com/TheIndyFilm/status/681117681051893760/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
5. There is a report that the ghost of Anakin Skywalker may have been considered to be in TFA.
davestrrr: This could be good for Episode VIII, but I agree with mazlow below that it would have been too much for VII. I think we are going to go on quite a ride in the next one, so this could be good for that.
mazlow01: I am really glad they didn’t do this. It would have been terrible especially if they went with the Vader and Anakin ghost.