‘Star Wars: Episode VIII’ release gets pushed back to December 2017

If you thought May 26, 2017 was a long time to wait for the next installment of the new Star Wars trilogy, then you’re in for a bit of a disappointment. The movie has been pushed back to December 15^th of the same year. The move was done after the success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and its December release (which was a first for a Star Wars film). What will be taking its place is Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Moving to December means that Star Wars will go head-to-head against James Cameron’s long-awaited Avatar 2, which is set to be released the following weekend. If you think the date change has affected Episode VIII, the Rian Johnson-led film will start principal photography in London next month.

Source: Wired

There won’t be an extended cut for ‘The Force Awakens’ Blu-ray edition

If you were thinking scoring the Blu-ray version of Star Wars: The Force Awakens will score you extra footage you didn’t see in the cinema, well you thought wrong. The film’s director J.J. Abrams has said there will be extras in the DVD/Blu-ray release but these will come in the form of deleted scenes from the movie. He hasn’t specified though how many scenes or how long these scenes will run.  Abrams said during the recent panel that the first cut of The Force Awakens clocked in at two hours and 50 minutes, which is 35 minutes longer than what we saw at the cinemas. Unfortunately, we don’t know yet when the DVD/Blu-ray editions of the new Star Wars trilogy will come out.

Source: EW + SlashGear

‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ becomes fastest film to reach $1 billion

Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm

Demonstrating how hyper speed can work in real life, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens dethrones Jurassic World as the fastest movie to hit the US$1 billion mark. They achieved this in 12 days, which is one day less than the epic dinosaur remake film. And Star Wars hit this without China’s ticket sales yet. Considered the second-largest movie market in the world, China will start showing The Force Awakens in January 9^th.

Other records the film got is it posted the biggest Christmas Day box office at $49.3 million and best second weekend earnings with $153.5 million in the U.S. and Canada, according to estimated ticket sales by Rentrak. It also garnered $133.3 million in international theatres (excluding Canada and the US). In North America, it also set opening weekend record at $238 million, also besting Jurassic World. It set international opening weekend records in Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe as well. The J.J. Abrams’ film also scored the biggest worldwide debut at $529 million and topped $100 million in IMAX screenings 10 days.

Source: AP The Big Story

Spotify subscribers can now stream the "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" OST

John Williams' iconic and masterful score for all the Star Wars movies has been one of the defining features of this beloved movie franchise and this continues for Episode VII. Just in time for the global opening of the film, Spotify is making available the entire soundtrack to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It's a nice, spoiler free way to ruminate on the movie before or after seeing it and Williams delivers another dramatic and heroic score that's intrinsic to the movie's character.