George Lucas

There have been a lot of huge, jaw-dropping announcements in the “Star Wars” universe lately, so why not one more? David Tennant, known to a lot of people as the 10th Doctor on the long-running BBC series “Doctor Who,” is about to make his debut in the “Star Wars” universe. Tennant will lend his voice to this Saturday’s episode of “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” on Cartoon Network, playing Huyang, a droid who works for the Jedis, overseeing the construction of lightsabers. PHOTOS: Meet the characters from ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ And this isn’t just a one-shot deal. The character will appear in the two subsequent episodes following this weekend’s debut. According to “Clone Wars” supervising director, Dave Filoni, once he learned that Tennant was a big fan of “Star Wars,” he knew he needed to get “The Doctor” […]

In an interview with The Times in 2008, George Lucas said that his personal connection to the “Star Wars” saga ended with the Ewoks on Endor. “There really isn’t any story to tell there,” the filmmaker said at the time of prospects for his participation in the movie life of the franchise beyond the tale-concluding events in “Return of the Jedi.” “I get asked all the time, ‘What happens after “Return of the Jedi”?,’ and there really is no answer for that,” Lucas continued. “The movies were the story of Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker, and when Luke saves the galaxy and redeems his father, that’s where that story ends.” PHOTOS: ‘Star Wars’ at the box office The Walt Disney Co. announced today that it’s agreed to acquire Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion, and word quickly followed that there are plans […]

“Star Wars: Episode 7″? It’s happening according to a news release just issued by the Walt Disney Co., which just announced its acquisition of Lucasfilm. The new film is targeted  to open in 2015, with Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy serving as executive producer and George Lucas serving as creative consultant, the release said. PHOTOS: ‘Star Wars’ at the box office Additional feature films are expected to “continue the ‘Star Wars’ saga and grow the franchise well into the future,” the statement said. [Updated: Three new movies, Lucas won’t write or direct] – Gina McIntyre Follow us on Twitter: @LATHeroComplex RECENT AND RELATED: ‘The Clone Wars’ brings the Dark Side to Saturdays ‘Star Wars: Clone Wars’ panel converts a fan on site Comic-Con: Lightsaber relay brings the Force When George Lucas wasn’t feeling The Force Saturn Awards honor Dexter’s dad, Yoda’s voice What if Darth Vader was […]

“Star Wars: The Clone Wars” took a turn for the dark last year with its tales of a Republic hero revealed to be in allegiance with the Dark Side (we won’t reveal who) and a seriously disturbed Darth Maul making a frightening comeback. Now that the fifth season is well underway on Cartoon Network, “Clone Wars’” supervising director Dave Filoni and crew are pulling back the curtain on their work on the new fourth season Blu-ray release out Tuesday. “A lot of time on animation productions there are limitations, with people saying you can’t do this, you can’t go here,” Filoni said in an interview last month. “George [Lucas] is never concerned with that, it’s more about this is a story I want to tell. And then it’s up to [us] to figure out how to make those visuals happen.” […]

Kathleen Kennedy has a résumé nearly unmatched in Hollywood — over the years, she’s produced such respected films as “The Color Purple,” “Empire of the Sun,” “Jurassic Park,” “The Sixth Sense,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and the upcoming historical epic, “Lincoln.” In June, George Lucas named Kennedy, 59, as co-chair for his vast Lucasfilm empire. One prominent feature of her lengthy filmography is Kennedy’s long-running collaboration with Steven Spielberg — she first worked with him as a production assistant on his costly flop, “1941,” then as associate producer on 1981’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark”; along with her husband, producer Frank Marshall, and Spielberg, she created the successful production company Amblin and served as its president until 1992, when she and Marshall formed the Kennedy/Marshall Co. Her first producer credit came in 1982 with Spielberg’s beloved boy-and-his-alien fantasy […]

When animator Dave Filoni was handed the reins of George Lucas’ computer animated series “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” back in 2006, he thought he knew what to expect. Lucas, the creator and mastermind of the entire multibillion-dollar “Star Wars” operation, would give some initial guidance, notes and feedback and quickly fade away, moving on to tend to other aspects of his Lucasfilm empire. After all, it was a cartoon series aimed a kids, airing on Cartoon Network and regarded by many of the franchise’s older hardcore fans as a nice, but hardly essential, extension of the “Star Wars” experience. “As he saw the first footage coming back, and I think he could sense our excitement levels through the whole thing, he got more and more engaged and excited,” Filoni said. “He just kept coming in. He wouldn’t go away. […]

Frank Oz was the voice of the wise and beloved Yoda and, more than 30 years after the character’s debut, not a month goes by without a fan approaching Oz with a simple request — but the answer is always the same: Do the impression he won’t. The 68-year-old Hollywood Renaissance man — Muppet puppeteer, movie director and the voice behind the pint-sized Jedi master — holds his characters too sacred for such tripe. “You wouldn’t parade your kids around like that, would you?” he said. “They’re part of me. I won’t use them as a party favor to impress people.” Oz, who lives in Manhattan, will return to Los Angeles on Thursday to accept a lifetime achievement honor at the 38th annual Saturn Awards, which are presented by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. He’ll don […]

Flashy footage from the upcoming fifth season of “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” on Cartoon Network made a convert out of one fan during the show’s Saturday afternoon panel. During the question-and-answer session a guy in a baseball cap got up to inform supervising director Dave Filoni and writer Matt Michnovetz that he’d never seen the show and was just hanging out in the ballroom for the “Halo 4” presentation that was to follow, but after seeing the footage, he’d become a fan. He planned to go out and watch every episode right away. The jovial Filoni and Michnovetz fielded all kinds of questions from audience members more familiar with the show during the hour-long panel, which featured the two men and the panel moderator flanked by four clone soldiers in full armor. While Filoni could only tease certain developments […]

If you haven’t heard Gotye’s No. 1 hit “Somebody That I Used to Know” in the last five minutes (as unlikely as that seems) and you like to bemoan the digital revisionism of George Lucas we’ve got a treat for you. Check out this video that takes the Jedi universe into the echo chamber of pop parody… For fans of a certain age, Lucas seems like a painter who won’t let go of his most famous canvas — instead of treating the original “Star Wars” trilogy as a piece of fixed history, he scrapes off the appealing pigments of the past (like Han Solo’s outlaw ethics and unsportsmanlike decision to preemptively murder a green guy named Greedo) and then digitally paint right over our collective moviegoing memories (the Blu-rays show us now that it was Greedo who fired first). Lucas has said that he […]

Are you a Jedi fan who wishes that Star Wars Day felt a little more special? Well, good news — this year the date arrives with ”New Hope” and The Force of history. The May 4 tradition (“May the Fourth be with you” — see what they did there?) gives fans yet another occasion to dust off their lightsabers, don their stormtrooper suits and bask in the Blu-ray glow of Jedi films. But more than that, this month marks the 35th anniversary of the first “Star Wars” release, later labeled “Episode IV” and called “A New Hope.” And it was 29 years ago that “Return of the Jedi” closed out the original trilogy of the space saga that defined cinema for a generation of moviegoers and future filmmakers. Fans today can’t get enough of the imaginative universe George Lucas created, but in May of 1983, […]