Star Wars Bits: Daisy Ridley Shoots Down A Rey Rumor, Fallen Order Gameplay, Why Riz Ahmed Missed Star Wars Celebration, And More
In this edition of Star Wars Bits:
The E3 video game convention recently concluded, and to promote next year's release of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, a team built this 8-foot-tall LEGO recreation of Han Solo frozen in carbonite out of 49,735 pieces. It took 38 hours to design and 210 hours to build. Most impressive.
A rumor from a site with a questionable track record indicated that Daisy Ridley's Rey would be appearing one of the next Star Wars film trilogies. But the actress shot down that rumor, confirming the information that's been out there for a while already: that both the Rian Johnson and the Benioff/Weiss trilogies are going to be separate stories from the main saga.
Ridley was also a guest on The Tonight Show, where she spoke about the first time J.J. Abrams told her the story for The Rise of Skywalker, her last day on the film's set, and more.
As Ridley mentioned, Abrams' story changed from when he first pitched it to when they were on the set. (That's a hallmark of his filmmaking style – adapting and creating on the fly.) In an interview with The Associated Press, actress Keri Russell mentioned her emotional reaction to reading J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio's The Rise of Skywalker script for the first time, and also indicated that a change was very possible:
"When I read his script that he wrote I cried. I mean who knows what it will turn out to be and I hope it remains true to what he originally wanted."
Bad news for the procrastinators among you: 4-Day passes for next year's Star Wars Celebration sold out several days ago. Better luck next time – or maybe you'll luck out on the streets of Anaheim when half of the attendees just decide to say "screw it" and spend their entire time in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge across the street from the convention center.
EA has posted nearly half an hour of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order gameplay online. I didn't realize that giant spiders were part of the Star Wars universe until scrolling through this footage, so thanks for the nightmare fuel, game!
Redditors have posted a few pages of a new Star Wars comic in which Finn comes face to face with the villainous Kylo Ren in a time before The Force Awakens. It's called Age of Resistance: Finn, and it hits shelves on July 3, 2019.
Riz Ahmed, who played Bodhi in Rogue One, was supposed to do a full appearance at this year's Star Wars Celebration in Chicago, but at a recent leadership conference, he revealed that the reason he wasn't able to do that was because Homeland Security stopped him from boarding his plane in a case of racial profiling.
Unfortunately I can't say much about them at this time. Hopefully they'll eventually show up in person in the Park though. Fingers crossed.
— Matt Martin – INACTIVE (@missingwords) June 24, 2019
Matt Martin, a member of the Lucasfilm Story Group, hopes that the battle-hardened "Mountain Troopers" will show up in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge at some point.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, actress Gina Carano (Deadpool) spoke about how showrunner Jon Favreau encouraged her on the set of The Mandalorian:
"He looked at me before my big scene, one of my biggest introductory scenes in Mandalorian, and he was like, 'We're gonna change your trajectory right now.' I think he's a very honest man, and he's seen the struggle, and he's seen what happens to careers and he's like, 'We're gonna change your path right now'... He's like, 'From here on out, you're gonna choose jobs that are complementing [you]. And you're gonna choose jobs that challenge you. And you're gonna believe in yourself. From this scene forward.'... I was welling up with tears. And I went out and I crushed that scene. And it was like, a scene when I first read the script I was like, 'Oh gosh, this is more than I've ever been given — how am I going to do this?' And then, with him, I really trained for it, and I really was present... He believed in me and it helped me believe in myself. I couldn't thank him enough, because I feel like my whole life since I shot that has been a different world."
Jon Favreau: class act.
And speaking of The Mandalorian, Boba Fett actor Daniel Logan mentioned in an interview with Collider about how the new show could reveal why Boba Fett (who may or may not ever actually appear) might have been inspired to appropriate that culture:
"...now that the Mandalorians have a place that we can explore, you start to understand why the Fetts started to be attracted to that Mandalorian lifestyle, why they dressed as the Mandalorians and took on that homage, I guess – the creed...But The Mandalorian doesn't have to...have Boba Fett in every single episode. The fact is, with all the new directors and exploring the world of The Mandalorian, you guys are going to get so much that we weren't promised..."
The Mandalorian debuts on Disney+ on November 12, 2019.