Star Wars Episode VII News: Week 10

The Return of R2-D2

     The past three weeks have yielded a lot of Star Wars news, and there has been official confirmation as well. First, it was reported that the movie Warcraft was pushing back its release date three months to March because it can't go against Episode VII. Also on the release date, J.J. Abrams commented on it. He said,      "I will say that it is an infinitely better situation now than when they were saying that they wanted it in the summer [of 2015] ... I understand why they'd want that, but it didn't necessarily have anything to do with the reality of where anything was creatively... a release date is great, but you have to release something great. To me, the new release date is a huge improvement."

     Amen.

     Open casting has spread from London to Bristol, then across the Atlantic to Memphis, Troy, Austin, and Chicago. The casting call is apparently looking for a Matt Damon-type character, aka a "forty-something military man" the casting call reports.

     In other news, Star Wars has now created an Instagram page, with the first photo posted being this:

     

     This has sparked a rumor that Disney is hinting a Darth Vader return to Episode VII. But, Star Wars, being Star Wars, Darth Vader was bound to show up on an Instagram page, regardless of his appearance in Episode VII.

     Another rumor started was that a full scale Millenium Falcon was created for production, inside and out. However, this was by an anonymous source with no credentials. And, even if it were true, Disney could just as easily build miniatures or use CGI for the Millenium Falcon in Episode VII. If this rumor is true, the Falcon probably wasn't built for Star Wars. It was probably built for one of its many theme parks for tourists to explore. Who knows?

     The latest official news from Star Wars isn't surprising, but it is comforting. Two weeks ago, this image was posted on Bad Robot:

     This was the first behind the scenes look at Episode VII, in it stand R2-D2, J.J. Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy, and two other dudes. Those two dudes were from the R2-D2 Builders Club, and they were reported by Star Wars to be the ones to build R2-D2 for Episode VII. 

     This news comes as an expected, yet welcome Star Wars piece of information. R2-D2 was obviously expected to return, but this one is fan made, unlike all previous R2-D2s, which were studio made. It's nice to know that there are fans out there who make R2-D2 models as close as possible to the ones in the films. Well, that is, not the prequels, then R2-D2 would have rocket feet from Episode II. Ugh.