Not everyone was spending the long July 4th weekend out in the sun, and making the most of three days off work. J.J. Abrams and Walt Disney are still busy at work on "Star Wars: Episode 7," and the ensemble that already includes John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Max von Sydow, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, Kenny Baker, Lupita Nyong’o and Gwendoline Christie, just got a little bigger.
Up-and-comers Crystal Clarke and Pip Andersen have been selected to join the film, after a global casting call at the end of last year. Of course, there’s no details on their roles, but it should be noted Andersen is something of a parkour expert. His skills have been seen in a handful of advertisements, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of function he’ll serve in this sequel. "Star Wars: Episode 7 — PARKOUR," perhaps? Geez, let’s hope not.
Meanwhile, as rumor and speculation swirled over the fate of the production following Harrison Ford’s injury, the official statement is that in August "the team will take a brief two-week hiatus while adjustments to the current production schedule are made" (which we always figured would happen) and that "shooting remains on track to wrap in the fall with the film scheduled for release on December 18, 2015." In other words, nothing is going to stop this Titanic of box-office, licensing, and marketing from reaching its destination on time.
Lastly, Kevin Smith recently created some buzz after posting a selfie to Instagram of him crying following a visit to Abrams’ sequel set. And during a masterclass at Neuchatel International Film Festival in Switzerland, he elaborated on what he saw (well, as much as could, given he signed a non-disclosure agreement), and needless to say, he’s excited. Here’s an excerpt via Slashfilm:
As I walked up that ramp [of the Millennium Falcon] I realized that the something that was missing from those other movies (the prequels) and its now in these movies. And its not the obvious like hey the Millennium Falcon or hey the characters that we know are returning. Its something else entirely — he’s building a tactile world, a world you can touch. And he’s replicating with all the love of someone who has the world’s greatest collection of Star Wars figures. And when you walk on that set man, I don’t know how else to describe it except thusly: you use another pop culture reference to describe this pop culture phenomenon. Its like the field of dreams, the Kevin Costner movie. And if JJ builds it, we’re all going to come hard, because its amazing. It looks fantastic. So anyone out there wondering if he’s going to pull it off, he’s pulling it off. He showed me cut scenes, he showed me sequences, images, pictures. I cried and I hugged that guy. And I’m sure as I was crying and hugging on him that he was thinking “time is money” because theyre making a movie. But he got it. He was very flattered. And I was like “Honestly dude, you’re doing it. You’re making my childhood again. You’re doing our Star Wars. What I saw, blew me away.
So Kevin Smith likes it, even though filming is still happening, none of the effects are likely finished and the movie is eighteen months away. But hype is hype, we suppose. Check out Andersen’s work below, Smith’s masterclass (the ‘Episode 7’ stuff starts around the 35-minute mark) along with Smith’s selfie.