Movies

Star Wars Bits: A Cancelled Video Game, 'Episode 9' Theories, 'Star Wars: By The Numbers', And More

Star Wars By The Numbers
By Ben Pearson

In this edition of Star Wars Bits:

  • EA has cancelled one of its Star Wars video games
  • How BB-8's original design factored into Star Wars Resistance
  • Teaser for Vader Immortal virtual reality experience
  • A theory about what may happen in J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: Episode 9
  • When we might see footage from The Mandalorian
  • And much more!

    • star wars visceral video gameKotaku recently reported that EA cancelled an open-world Star Wars game which would have allowed gamers to play "as a scoundrel or bounty hunter who could explore various open-world planets and work with different factions across the Star Wars universe." EA responded to the report, essentially confirming the story and saying that they were continuing to work on other Star Wars-related projects. There's good news, though: we might get a different new Star Wars game in late 2020.

    Dominic Monaghan, Star Wars: Episode IX actor and J.J. Abrams' old pal from Lost, shared a quick video of a cast & crew jacket that was given to those who worked on the upcoming sequel.

    ILMxLAB tweeted a brief new teaser for Vader Immortal, a virtual reality experience that we've written about in the past. And that mention of "cheating death" in the teaser certainly recalls plenty of the talk that's cropped up around Vader in the comic books over the past several months, so it'll be interesting to see how directly this VR story may tie in to that larger conversation.

    StarWars.com shared the cover for Alexander Freed's new novel Alphabet Squadron (confirmed to be the first in a trilogy) and revealed that Star Wars: TIE Fighter is a new comic miniseries debuting in April will be set at the same time as that novel trilogy. Here's the logline: "In the last days of the Galactic Civil War, an elite squadron of TIE fighter pilots, known as Shadow Wing, is assembled to protect Imperial interests." Writer Jody Hauser (Thrawn) and artist Rogê Antônio will create the new crossover comic series that's set after Return of the Jedi and follows "the brutal fallout during the fall of the Empire from both sides of the battle."

    Our friend and former /Film writer Germain Lussier smartly deduces that we'll likely see some footage of Jon Favreau's Disney+ series The Mandalorian on April 11, 2019.

    Star Wars Episode 9

    Everyone's wondering what might happen in Star Wars: Episode 9 –which The Hollywood Reporter theorizes may be called Star Wars: The Knights of Ren – and a Reddit user (via Inverse) thinks they've figured it out. According to their theory, the Resistance and The First Order will join forces to face a common enemy: an alien race called the Grysk. The race was introduced in the novel Thrawn: Alliances, and the Redditor speculates that this race could end up being a threat large enough to make them the main villains of a whole new trilogy, but more importantly, that Rey and Kylo Ren could fight side by side again to defeat them in Episode 9. It seems a little late for Lucasfilm to introduce a never-before-seen threat in what is supposed to be the final entry in the Skywalker saga, so I'm not fully on board with this idea. But it's a fun theory, and who knows – maybe they're onto something.

    Here's a cool little video (via SyFyWire) that talks about how the initial concept designs for BB-8 were used to bring that character to life in Star Wars: Resistance. Big eyes and anime go hand in hand, so this tweak makes perfect sense.

    Droid imageMakingStarWars has been sharing tons of set photos from The Mandalorian, and in one of their recent articles, they posted this recreation of a droid that one of their reporters saw on the set. That same article has several interesting photos of a downed TIE Fighter and a marshy environment that incorporated Christmas trees into the background.

    Twitter user @sw_edge relayed these photos (via WDWNT) of the ride vehicles in Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run, one of the most anticipated attractions that will be opening at Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge.

    Pirate's Price cover

    We embedded an episode of Star Wars Explained into a recent article about why Hondo Ohnaka has the Millennium Falcon and why the ship is on Batuu, the Outer Rim planet where Galaxy's Edge is set. That information came from a new book called Pirate's Price, and StarWars.com has an exclusive excerpt.

    Felicity Jones' heroic rebel Jyn Erso didn't make it past the end credits of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, but that pesky little detail doesn't stop the actress from wanting to play her again. Variety (via GeekTyrant) quotes her as saying:

    "I was very fortunate in some respects that it was a one-off, so we very much explored that. But I loved playing that character, so I actually, in a opposite way, I would really like to have a little more consistency and bring Jyn back. I would actually like that for a couple of years, just to have a little bit of that stability."

    Jones' Rogue One co-star Diego Luna will soon be leading his own prequel series on Disney+ as Rogue One's Cassian Andor, but it doesn't really make sense for Jyn Erso to show up in that. Could Disney+ give her a separate prequel series? Would you want to see more from this character during the years where she was training with Forest Whitaker's Saw Gerrera?

    There are untold numbers of Star Wars supercuts floating around the internet, so Lucasfilm decided to cut out the middle man and get into that game themselves with a new digital show aimed at children called Star Wars: By The Numbers. The first episode tracks how many times the words "yes" and "no" are spoken across the entire film franchise, with more videos on the way.

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