Hasbro announced at the Hasbro Fall 2007 Analyst Event that the upcoming Star Wars animated TV series The Clone Wars will have a theatrical launch on August 8, 2008 as part of their Star Wars Cinemation before airing on TV later that fall.

Chief Operating Officer, Brian Goldner speaking about their partnership with Lucasfilm said: “Yes, Star Wars will be back in theaters August 8th, 2008, then the series will appear on TV throughout the fall.”

TheForce.net contacted Lucasfilm who said that no release strategy has been decided yet:

“I’d like to clarify Hasbro comments this AM about the Clone Wars TV Series. We see it as a breakthrough animated television series and are exploring a number of innovative ways to introduce it to the public. No decisions regarding release strategy have been made yet.”

I followed up with just one question. Is a theatrical release introducing the series in the works and received this response: “It’s one of the many things being discussed but we have no decisions yet. For us it’s all about finding a creative way to launch a creative TV series.”

There has been no official word out on how the Writers Guild of America strike has impacted George Luca’s plans for developing both an animated and a live-action television series. However we can easily determine a few things:

First of all, the 3-D CGI Animated series The Clone Wars should not be affected at all, since Lucas reported that 40 episodes are already completed in their entirety.

However, the Live-Action series development will certainly be delayed some, since Lucas was on his way to Los Angeles to recruit freelance “writers of real significance” in late October when the strike talk was already hot and heavy.

The plan was to bring these writers to Skywalker Ranch to hatch out ideas for the first 13 episodes, but since the strike began Nov. 5th that meeting my or may not have happened. Those writers according to the strike would most likely have to decline, however who would turn down an invitation to the Star Wars capital of the galaxy Skywalker Ranch - so there is a good possibility it did happen, just no one is talking about it.

However, even if this first writer’s session was canceled it shouldn’t delay the actual 2009 release of the television show. The only fear of that would be if this strike lasts much longer than the 1988 writer’s strike that lasted 5 months, but that seems highly unlikely.

Here are 10 obscure things you can learn by reading “The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film”:

1. Between the second and third drafts, Luke was changed to be a girl. (I knew he was to whiny to be a man!)

2. The Jawa Sandcrawler set was searched by the Libyan army to make sure it wasn’t a Tunisian military operation. (I wonder if Libyan Dictator Moammar Gadhafi is a Star Wars fan?)

3. The R2-D2 robot wandered into the set of Franco Zeffirelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth,” which was also filming in the Tunisian desert. (They should have worked the lovable asteroid-mech in as the mysterious 13th apostle!)

4. Alec Guinness got mad and almost quit when, midway through production, George Lucas decided that Obi-Wan Kenobi would die. (Guinness was just tired of picking sand out of his ass - I mean the guy was a high-brow thespian for crying out loud!)

5. Carrie Fisher stood on a turntable to film the R2-D2 hologram message. (Put the needle on the record, put the needle on the record and the Princess goes like this…)

6. After playing the part of C3-P0 for the entire production, Anthony Daniels was almost replaced during voice-over recordings by someone who could make the character sound more like an American used-car salesman. (Sometimes I wish they had given Threepio a different voice, not sure car salesman is the way to go though to get less annoying.)

7. The trench that the rebels fly through isn’t the one that runs around the equator of the Death Star. It’s one of 18 vertical trenches that start halfway up from the equator and run toward the north pole. (Lucas must have been smoking a lot of pot back in those days - too bad he quit before the prequels came out)

8. The motion picture review board rated “Star Wars” a G, until the studio went back and demanded a PG rating. Also, some of the raters fell asleep during the screening. (How in the hell does someone fall asleep during their very first viewing of Star Wars - WTF? How were they not mesmerized when you consider some of the other movies the MPAA screened that year like Beaver Dam or Chaste and Pure or The Amazing Apes)

9. Lucas and Steven Spielberg swapped profit points on their two movies, “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” each believing the other’s would do better. (I never realized Encounters came out the same year - or that Encounters did so poorly in the Box Office, as it was 30th most popular that year - guess what was #1)

10. Twentieth Century Fox’s stock jumped 450% immediately after Star Wars came out. (They should have just given the keys of the studio to Lucas right then)

George Lucas has mentioned that the upcoming Star Wars television series would be similar to the work Lucas and producer Rick McCallum did on the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series in the early nineties.

So my interest has been piqued and I need to check out this series. I am not quite sure why I knew nothing about this series at the time it was on TV or why I have paid no attention to it since, but this article gives a lot of detail on the series and Lucas’s affection for the project that make me think it is worth looking into further:

“We have another chance to let the world see it,” he says, “and that’s exciting for me.”

(Said Lucas referring to the) 1992-93 ABC television series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which is, by the standards of the 63-year-old filmmaker’s career, a beautiful loser. It was, he says, “the single most fun I ever had with any project.”

Over the past four years, Lucas and Paramount Home Video have pumped millions of dollars into reframing Young Indiana as a lavish library of DVDs with a staggering number of extras, including 94 highly polished documentaries on famous people and moments in history. Volume one, with 12 DVDs, is in stores with a $ 129. 98 list price. Volume two is due Dec. 13.

Lucas said it was a victory persuading Paramount and ABC to let him make Young Indiana.

“They let me do it, and do it in the way I wanted to do it. The main thing I was really after was to see how many shows I could get done before they woke up and said enough is enough. And, you know, we managed to get 44 hours of material out there. I felt grateful I got as much done as I did.”

Critics loved it. “By far,” The New York Times weighed in, “the most impressively mounted weekly show on television.” Time said no show had “more ambition or style,” and The Wall Street Journal said it raised the standards of television production to “the caliber of theatrical film.” Bill Moyers wished that the series would be “my grandson’s companion far into the 21 st century.” It won 11 Emmy Awards.

The show was a gathering point for an impressive amount of talent, on-screen and off, with actors such as Max von Sydow, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Elizabeth Hurley and Daniel Craig passing through its stories, and directors such as Mike Newell working with writers such as Frank Darabont.

Read the Full Article

The top 10 movie lines we use the most according to a survey by myfilms.com and UK Film Council:

1 “I’ll be back.” (The Terminator)
2 “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” (Gone With The Wind)
3 “Beam me up, Scotty.” (Star Trek)
4 “May the force be with you.” (Star Wars)
5 “Life is like a box of chocolates.” (Forrest Gump)
6 “You talking to me?” (Taxi Driver)
7 “Show me the money.” (Jerry Maguire)
8 “Do you feel lucky, punk?” (Dirty Harry)
9 “Here’s looking at you, kid.” (Casablanca)
10 “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.” (Dirty Dancing)

After scoring a hit with the Star Wars parody episode, Blue Harvest, this season, “Family Guy” cast has begun work on a similar parody of “The Empire Strikes Back.”

Apparently actress Mila Kunis, who voices Meg, spilled the beans to IESB reporter Robert Sanchez at the party for the show’s 100th episode.

Seth MacFarlane confirmed that the script for the episode has been completed and the cast has already done a table read for it.

He also suggested that Boba Fett will be played by Peter Griffin’s nemesis, the Giant Chicken.

There is no set air date, but it has been rumored that there will be a teaser trailer for the Empire parody on the “Family Guy: Blue Harvest” DVD expected to be released in January of 2008. So clearly the show won’t air until some months after.

Click here - If you want to see all the clips from this great Family Guy episode

StarWars.com recently published an interesting interview with Kilian Plunkett, the character design for The Clone Wars CGI Animated series expected to find a home on television sometime in 2008.

Two things stood out in the interview, first was Plunkett’s take on drawing Star Wars for thirty years, since he started as a childhood fan:

“I was like pretty much every other kid and just enjoyed drawing for its own sake, but I never really stopped. I still have a copybook from when I was seven that has a bunch of Star Wars drawings in it. There’s a lot of stormtroopers and Vaders in there, as well as some X-wing and TIE fighter action over the Death Star. They’re all pretty crude drawings but I had fun doing them. So not much has really changed between then and now.”

The other, was Plunkett describing the “unique Star Wars aesthetic”:

The universe that George came up with is one of those very rare creations that is different to the world we know but feels like a real place. You need to try and absorb the look and feel of the movies so that you can see the shapes and colors that show up over and over. Watching the movies is the only way to really ‘get it’

Read the complete interview here:
http://www.starwars.com/theclonewars/blogs/f20071005/

Be sure not to miss the second half of the interview here:
http://www.starwars.com/theclonewars/blogs/f20071005/indexp2.html

Boba Fett, the most feared Bounty Hunter in the Galaxy, will be featured in the highly-anticipated Star Wars live action TV series.

Producer Rick McCallum, told fans at the Star Wars Reunion 2 in France, that he is looking for actor Daniel Logan to reprise his role from the Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, where he played the young Boba who witnessed Mace Windu decapitate his father Jango Fett.

Nothing against Logan, who is now 20-years-old, but he hasn’t really done much since the Star Wars movie - I am sure they will have no problem getting him to take on the part.

No other casting announcements have been made - aside from Lord Anthony Hopkins joking that he would consider taking on “the Alec Guinness role” - I guess no one told him that Obi Wan will not be in the series.