Cantina Talk: There Might Be a Last Jedi Trailer Soon!
Consider this the calm before the stormtroopers come—or, at least, a rare moment of quiet in the galaxy far, far away. September began with Force Friday II, and all signs point to a full trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi dropping soon, but right now it's looking fairly peaceful out there now that J.J. Abrams has reappeared to save the day on Episode IX. Of course, that doesn't mean that everything is going entirely smoothly. Here is what you need to know about things currently happening in the Star Wars universe … and a little bit more, too.
Everybody Wants J.J. Abrams
The Source: Insider Hollywood sources
Probability of Accuracy: We may never know for sure, but let's err on the side of, "That sounds about right."
The Real Deal: So Episode IX has a new director, but it turns out that J.J. Abrams didn't come cheap for Disney and Lucasfilm. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Paramount Studios, which was due to make the next Abrams movie, got a payment somewhere in the seven-figure range to ensure that the director could jump ship to helm Episode IX. Abrams' arrival also pushes the release date of the movie back. Now that he's going to co-write it as well as direct (Chris Terrio, who worked on Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, is the other writer), the movie is moving from a May 2019 to a December 20, 2019 release date. With this in mind, what are the odds that the Han Solo movie—which also went through its own director-replacement woes earlier this year—gets pushed from May 2018 to December 2018? If it doesn't, it'll be the only Star Wars movie of the current crop getting a summer release.
The Last Jedi Expands Into New Areas, Figuratively and Literally
The Source: Official announcements from publishers
Probability of Accuracy: 100 percent on-target.
The Real Deal: Turns out, fans of the new locales in this December's Star Wars: The Last Jedi won't have to wait too long to find out more about them, with a prose collection and a comic book issue both arriving that month to spill all kinds of beans. First up is the Star Wars: Canto Bight prose anthology, which features four stories set in the casino city that plays an important role in the new movie; that'll hit stores on December 5. Three weeks later, Star Wars: The Last Jedi — Storms of Crait—a one-shot comic book that tells the backstory of the new planet from the movie—hits shelves. The latter book features Luke and Leia exploring Crait during the period of the original trilogy. But what's the hidden connection between those movies and The Last Jedi? You can find out December 27. What is the hidden connection between that trilogy and the new era? You can find out December 27. Whatever happened to the old days, when you had to make up stories in your head and then all your friends said they were dumb when you told them? What happened to those days?
A New Last Jedi Trailer May Be Here in Two Weeks
The Source: A now-deleted tweet from someone who should know
Probability of Accuracy: Well, that's a little complicated…
The Real Deal: The question of when audiences are going to get the first full trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi might have been answered, but only for those paying close enough attention to Mark Hamill's Twitter feed. On September 19, he tweeted: "Watch Monday Night Football on Monday October 9th - for no reason in particular." He then very quickly deleted the tweet, although certain websites had the wherewithal to take screenshots before it disappeared. An October trailer would follow the pattern set by The Force Awakens, which released its first full trailer October 15, 2015 after an April teaser, but could Hamill have been referring to something else entirely, or even just trolling his followers? After all, it's not as if he's never done that before.
Will the Han Solo Movie Show the Kessel Run? It Just Might!
The Source: Speculation based off an especially teasing Ron Howard tweet
Probability of Accuracy: It's still speculative, but it certainly makes sense.
The Real Deal: You know where you really don't want to end up? The spice mines of Kessel. For those whose memory of the original movie isn't distressingly precise, that's a location C-3PO worries about at one point, declaring that if he and R2-D2 don't behave, they'll "be sent to the spice mines of Kessel, smashed into who-knows-what!" Said mines, according to the mythology, are slave labor camps where minerals are transformed into illegal drugs. They also lend their name to the Kessel run, which apparently the Millennium Falcon did in 12 parsecs. (The Kessel run is, theoretically, the delivery route for the drugs from the spice mines to their endpoint.) Why are we telling you all this? Because Han Solo movie director tweeted this:
So… does this mean we're going to get the Kessel run in next year's movie? Because it certainly seems that way. This was just the latest of Howard's social media teases from the movie's set. Happily, the official Star Wars website rounded up earlier examples here.
