Rogue One is coming to Celebration London, Darth Vader is coming to an end, and the debut of The Star Wars Show! It’s never a dull week in the world of Star Wars.
By Mike Audette // In this edition of The Audette Set, we’ll talk Celebration London, Darth Vader, and The Star Wars Show! Let’s get into it.
Star Wars Celebration London is coming up quick! Less than two full months until the greater Star Wars fandom descends upon the city to revel in the unending goodness that is a Star Wars Celebration. Announced this week, Rogue One director Gareth Edwards will join Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy for a special panel on the film on July 15th. If this is following the pattern of Celebration Anaheim, which I believe it is, the panel will be the opening ceremony event and feature Gareth and some of the stars of the film with Kathleen discussing things about the production and promotion of Rogue One and end with a new teaser trailer like there was for The Force Awakens at the opening ceremony of Anaheim.
“Secret mission? What plans? What are you talking about?”
Find out, when Gareth Edwards — director of the upcoming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story — joins Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and some special guests for a Rogue One panel at Celebration Europe on July 15 for what is sure to be a can’t-miss event!
Be sure to keep up to date on all Celebration news and don’t forget to sign up for the Celebration email newsletter as I suggested last week.
Surprisingly that was not the only Celebration Europe news to drop this week! It has been announced that in addition to Mark Hamill, Princess Leia herself, Carrie Fisher will be in attendance for the weekend! I did not get the chance to attend any panels featuring Carrie last year at Anaheim and I really wish I did. You have no idea what to expect when you walk into a Carrie Fisher panel and that’s reason enough to go to one.
Also announced was that my friend, Amy Ratcliffe (Twitter), will be hosting the Behind the Scenes stage for Celebration! If you follow mostly any aspect of Star Wars fandom or any sort of pop culture fandom I’m undoubtedly sure you’ve seen Amy’s work at some-point and I have no doubt she is going to do an amazing job at Celebration! Good luck and May the Force be with you, Amy!
On Friday, the news broke that the ongoing Darth Vader comic series from Marvel will be coming to an end this August with the concluding 50-plus page issue #25. In an interview with IGN, series writer Kieron Gillen goes into detail of how the story has played out so far and how he feels this is the logical way to end the story in the most satisfactory way. Gillen says in the interview that when he started on Vader issue #1 he knew that the story had “a beginning, a middle, and an end” and after the Vader Down crossover with the main Star Wars series, they were a lot closer to the end than they realized. At the conclusion of this current story arc that started with issue #20 (Dennis Keithly’s review right here!) titled “End of Games,” it will finish right where Vader is as he is presented in The Empire Strikes Back. The Darth Vader series has been one of, if not my favorite, Star Wars comic series since Marvel restarted the official license. Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca have knocked this out of the park and I hope to see them on other Star Wars-related projects soon!
This Wednesday, almost out of no where, StarWars.com debuted it’s own variety style video show! Titled The Star Wars Show, it will cover “exclusive news and stories about Star Wars films, television shows, books, comics, video games, merchandise, toys, fan culture, art, and more.” The Star Wars Show is hosted by the always, always wonderful Andi Gutierrez and the brand new (to me at least!) Peter Townley, with production from Scott Bromley. The show looks like it’s already off with a bang on the first episode, which you can watch below! I’m a huge fan of what the digital team over at StarWars.com has been doing and the quality of content they are putting out just continues to rise and rise and rise. It really is an awesome age to be a fan.
http://https://youtu.be/dcj_IRwHYPI
The first episode serves as an introduction to the show, an interview with the director of the upcoming Warcraft film, Duncan Jones, as well as a spotlight on May the 4th as well as a look at some trooping that took place a children’s hospital.