![Clone Trooper (212th Attack Battalion) (No. 19) - Hasbro - The Clone Wars [blue] (2009)](/theclonewars/thumbs/tcw19-212clone1-th.jpg "Clone Trooper (212th Attack Battalion) (No. 19) - Hasbro - The Clone Wars [blue] (2009)")
Movie and TV News
You may wonder why I would want to talk about the upcoming (as of now) Rey movie “New Jedi Order” again, well, the reason for that is simple. For some inexplicable (or not) reason the director of the Rey movie, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, made a somewhat puzzling appearance on CNN on New Year’s Eve where she briefly talked about the Star Wars movie scheduled for release in 2026. CNN treated that almost as if it’s anything newsworthy, even though she was announced as the director back in April 2023, in fact, it is very strange and peculiar why Obaid-Chinoy made this appearance, doing PR work for a movie that still doesn’t have a finished script. So what is going on here? But what really irked quite a few Star Wars fans is what Obaid-Chinoy had to say about her directing job. Click through for the full story and a discussion!
Screenshot of two audience members watching New Jedi Order. Acquired from the future via wormhole time travel.
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Reputable leaker Jeff Sneider (who has a really good track record – one of his more recent scoops was that Damon Lindelof is working on a Star Wars movie, which turned out to be 100% correct) has dropped quite the surprise in his Hot Mic podcast. According to Sneider The Mandalorian season 4 will not be released on Disney+, instead it will be turned into a movie and it will even be the first new Star Wars movie to be released! Click through for more!
You are about the enter the Star Wars Rumor Zone!
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With the year drawing to a close and with things like Ahsoka and The Mandalorian season 3 behind us the question is what is next for Star Wars? We now have some more details about what will be next for Star Wars on Disney+ in 2024 based on an official press release. And there is also some news about the Rey movie (what could very well be the Star Wars version of The Marvels). Click through for the details!
On set photo of The Skeleton Crew – source: Bespin Bulletin
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Dave Filoni is further climbing up the ranks at Lucasfilm. Today it was announced that he has been promoted to Chief Creative Officer. What that means is that from now on Dave Filoni will no longer be a mere advisor who is maybe brought on when a project has already been in development for a while, Filoni will now work much closer together with Kathleen Kennedy and he will be involved with all upcoming projects already at the inception phase and thus have a direct impact on the early development of new projects. Click through for more!
Dave Filoni with mandatory cowboy hat at Star Wars Celebration 2023
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Entertainment Tonight published an interview with Taika Waititi yesterday and in it Waititi was of course asked about his Star Wars movie, which was announced all the way back in 2020. What did Waititi say? Click through for the full story!
The state of Star Wars movies in 2023
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The final episode of Ahsoka has been added to the Nielsen streaming charts! How did the episode perform? The Ahsoka finale also competed with the first episode of Loki season 2 – which franchise had the upper hand? Star Wars or Marvel? And how does the Ahsoka finale compare to all the other major season finals we’ve had on Disney+ thus far? Click through for all the details!
Shin shows Captain Marvel who’s the boss on Peridea
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A little later than usual, because Hasbro stole the spotlight in the past few days with things like a repacked Finn for the Vintage Collection, here are the latest Nielsen streaming charts numbers! The penultimate Ahsoka episode was added in the last update. So how is the series doing? Ahsoka gained about one million views with its 7th episode! Click through for more!
A deleted dialogue from Ahsoka episode 7 (click to enlarge so you can read the dialogue)
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It’s time yet again to look at the Nielsen Streaming Charts! How is Ahsoka faring with episode six added to the charts? Not all that much has changed actually! Click through for more!
The Sabine and Ezra reunion scene we should have had instead
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And it’s time yet again to see how Ahsoka performed on Disney+. Nielsen added the 5th episode which included a lengthy flashback (kind of) to the Clone Wars era with a young Anakin Skywalker and his teenage padawan Ahsoka. Now the question is if this major guest appearance would boost the ratings. Click through to find out more!
The much better Ahsoka
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I was a bit busy the past few days so I get to report the latest Nielsen numbers for Ahsoka a bit later than usual. And while some people may have you believe the ratings for the show are a complete disaster they are not really. But they are certainly not great either. So how did Ahsoka in week 3 perform? Click through for the important numbers!
In Ahsoka’s 4th episode Shin put on her Neko ears and went to the local Disneyland on Peridia to unwind from a long day of intense staring, glowering and lightsaber dueling. She had a great day!
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The Ahsoka season finale dropped last night! Was is a worthy conclusion to the season? Was it fun? Was it any good? Well…………………. it depends. Do you posess the talent to switch off your brain at will? Then “yes”. But if your brain refuses to cease functioning while watching Star Wars? Then probably “no”. Either way, there are many things to discuss, so click through to read my spoiler review for the Ahsoka season finale and let’s discuss it all!
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Nielsen have updated their streaming charts and added the third Ahsoka episode! So how did the third episode (or the show as a whole) do in its second week? It did “ok”. Click through for more!
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Last week I said episode six of Ahsoka, “Far Far Away”, is some of the best Star Wars on Disney+. Fast forward one week and episode seven is in many ways the counterpoint, it is in some ways the worst Star Wars on Disney+. How is this possible? Why is Ahsoka so terribly uneven? Now on the surface the current episode is fun, it has lots of ‘splosions, lightsaber action, space action, it has a swift pace and yet even more memberberry cameos. On the surface it’s never boring. But when you look behind the curtain you find there isn’t some Oz, there is nothing, just a vacuum of nothingness. The plot of this episode is plain stupid when you think about it all for just one second. No other way to put it. So click here to read my spoiler review for “Dreams and Madness” and let’s discuss the penultimate Ahsoka season 1 episode!
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Nielsen have updated their weekly streaming charts today and it is the first time they include Ahsoka. As you remember Ahsoka dropped two episodes on the same night, and Disney even changed their release strategy for the series, releasing the episodes at 9 pm in the prime time slot, contrary to all of the previous shows where the episodes dropped in the middle of the night. So how did the show do? Not good. Not good at all actually. Click through for all the details!
Boom….
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“Far Far Away” is in some ways the best Star Wars Disney+ has to offer outside of Andor. Ahsoka was off to a really rough start but episode six is a huge improvement once again, and one reason may be that Ahsoka herself is completely absent from this episode, other than for the first two minutes. So the episode can instead focus on the interesting characters of Baylan, Sabine and Shin and we also get the entrance of Thrawn and the return of Ezra of course. It turns out “Far Far Away” even attempts to and succeeds in recreating some of the original Star Wars magic. And we learn why the Jedi should really die, something that many people didn’t like at all when Luke said it in The Last Jedi. But after this, and the previous episode, you may understand why this would actually be a good idea, when we talk about how the Jedi really were. So there is lots to talk about, click through to read my spoiler review and let’s discuss the latest Ahsoka episode!
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You may have faint memories of Kathleen Kennedy announcing a Lando series several years ago (it was the event at which she also claimed the Kenobi series has been fully written, before the writer was fired and they rewrote the entire show from scratch). Then we heard literally nothing for ages… and people were wondering if the series was just cancelled without ever acknowledging it. Then the person supposed to write the series gave an interview not too long ago and complained about how he had not heard from Lucasfilm in over a year and he wondered if he’s too gay or black for Lucasfilm (it’s the guy who wrote and directed the massive Haunted Mansion remake flop, so Lucasfilm ignoring him may have other reasons). Probably to spite him after these inane comments Lucasfilm announced literally on the next day or so that Lando has a new writing team: Donald Glover, who played Lando in Solo, and his brother Stephen.
And now Stephen said in a podcast yesterday that Lando is no longer intended to be a show, but a movie… and Variety later ran their own story with official confirmation from Lucasfilm – to which I can only say… REALLY NOW? Click through for more!
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The latest Ahsoka episode should delight any fan of The Clone Wars. And fans of Anakin Skywalker / Hayden Christensen will also get their fill this time, actually we get Hayden Christensen’s best scenes in Disney Star Wars yet, much better than what Obi-Wan Kenobi gave us, Hayden gets substantial screentime in this episode. But then there are also space whales… a lot of them! Either way there is much to talk about again, so please click through to read my spoiler review for Shadow Warrior and let’s discuss the grand return of Anakin Skywalker (again)!
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I am very busy with Starfield but I did set apart some time today for Ahsoka of course. Fallen Jedi is the Ahsoka episode that will get people talking. The episode was light on plot and favored action over dialogue this time, which absolutely is a positive in this case. Baylan finally gets more screentime too and we learn a few things about him or at least what his mindset is, but of course there’s the one big thing that has people talking… so click through to read my spoiler review so we can all talk about that big thing!
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It’s already been a full week since the Ahsoka premiere… on to episode 3 then! Which was extremely short, only 29 minutes excluding the recap and credits. Still, there are quite a few things to talk about. Including what could be the Star Wars version of “jumping the shark”. So click through for my review of Time to Fly and lets discuss the latest Ahsoka episode!
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Pre-orders are now open for The Mandalorian Season One & Two Steelbook versions in both Blu-ray and 4K UHD. Click below for pre-order links!
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Dave Filoni’s first own live action series premiered last night! So how is Ahsoka, the series about Dave Filoni’s character he co-created with George Lucas all those many years ago? Also, does anyone who never watched a single Rebels episode even get what the series is all about? If you never liked Rebels, never cared for Rebels, or maybe watched a few episodes and hated it… chances are you may not want to bother with Ahsoka, it is a proper sequel to Rebels, even if you can watch Ahsoka without knowing too much about past events, you will only miss some context and background info and may not understand who this Ezra Bridger is and why everyone is searching for him.
And if you liked Rebels? Does Ahsoka deliver? Well…. how do I put it… we have to talk about a few things! So click through for my review of the first two episodes of Ahsoka!
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Ahsoka gets a two-episode premiere on August 23. Click through to check out the latest trailer and poster!
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Some stories are so incredible, you have a hard time believing them when you first hear them. Actor Jim Caviezel, who you may have seen in things like The Passion of the Christ or the tv series Person of Interest, is the main star of the small indie movie Sound of Freedom (about a former US government agent who rescues children from sex traffickers in Colombia), produced by a studio few will know, Angel Studios, and the movie only cost $14,500,000 to make. In interviews (on podcasts etc) Caviezel complained bitterly about mainstream Hollywood and how they try to sabotage the movie, by convincing theaters not to pick the movie up etc. In the same interviews Caviezel also said that the movie is tracking better than Indiana Jones in the theaters that picked up the movie, something I found very hard to believe. But… in fact, Sound of Freedom only plays in 2,600 theaters in the US, compared to the 4,600 that show Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny.
And now the punchline: Sound of Freedom opened on July 4th and immediately climbed to the top of the US box office, beating the $300 million (plus marketing) behemoth Indiana Jones And the Dial Of Destiny with a box office of $14.2 million vs $11.7 million. And this even though Sound of Freedom only plays in the aforementioned 2,600 theaters, 2,000 less than Indiana Jones. Sound of Freedom made $5,407 per theater, Indiana Jones just $2,543. So Caviezel was 100% correct when he said the movie is tracking better in the theaters that show both movies. Certainly a triumph for Caviezel and a major embarrassment for Lucasfilm and mainstream Hollywood that a smalltime indie movie with a miniscule budget about a topic that may be hard to swallow for some is beating Indiana Jones which just released a few days ago and earns more than twice the money in the theaters that show both.
The #1 movie at the domestic box office, beating Indiana Jones on day 4 of its release
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The box office numbers for Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny are in, and the opening weekend is the expected disaster. Indiana Jones earned just 60 million USD at the domestic box office. And overseas markets added another $70 million. Now the numbers are still preliminary, the final numbers could be off by +/- 1 or 2 million. Tracking numbers released yesterday said the movie would earn just $58.5 million domestic. Either way, this is the lowest end of the early box office projections.
So what does that mean for Disney and Lucasfilm? Will it mean anything? Head over to Chuck’s article if you want to discuss the movie itself. Here I want to focus on its financial performance and especially if the movie should lead to any personnel changes at Lucasfilm. This is not about whether the movie is good or bad, this is purely about its expected massive financial loss and what results that could have. So click through for a discussion!
Indiana Jones and the Bottle of Booze
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It’s not Star Wars, but definitely related to the fanbase (and Star Wars news is slow right now…). So let’s discuss the latest Indiana Jones release: The Dial of Destiny. Click through for a spoiler discussion. How did you like it? How did Old Indy hold up? How did young Indy hold up? After seeing it last night I thought it was a nice improvement over The Kindom of the Crystal Skull in both story and effects (the CGI in Crystal Skull was pretty bad), and de-aging tech has come leaps and bounds from even from the recent The Book of Boba Fett Luke Skywalker.
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