‘Star Wars: Episode VIII’ release gets pushed back to December 2017

If you thought May 26, 2017 was a long time to wait for the next installment of the new Star Wars trilogy, then you’re in for a bit of a disappointment. The movie has been pushed back to December 15^th of the same year. The move was done after the success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and its December release (which was a first for a Star Wars film). What will be taking its place is Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Moving to December means that Star Wars will go head-to-head against James Cameron’s long-awaited Avatar 2, which is set to be released the following weekend. If you think the date change has affected Episode VIII, the Rian Johnson-led film will start principal photography in London next month.

Source: Wired

There won’t be an extended cut for ‘The Force Awakens’ Blu-ray edition

If you were thinking scoring the Blu-ray version of Star Wars: The Force Awakens will score you extra footage you didn’t see in the cinema, well you thought wrong. The film’s director J.J. Abrams has said there will be extras in the DVD/Blu-ray release but these will come in the form of deleted scenes from the movie. He hasn’t specified though how many scenes or how long these scenes will run.  Abrams said during the recent panel that the first cut of The Force Awakens clocked in at two hours and 50 minutes, which is 35 minutes longer than what we saw at the cinemas. Unfortunately, we don’t know yet when the DVD/Blu-ray editions of the new Star Wars trilogy will come out.

Source: EW + SlashGear

J.J. Abrams calls out ‘Star Wars’ merchandise makers for lack of Rey merch

Hasbro has been on the receiving end of criticism as the company failed to include main protagonist Rey (played by Daisy Ridley) in the Star Wars edition of Monopoly, just one of the many merchandise released to promote Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The film’s director J.J. Abrams isn’t happy about this. “It seems preposterous and wrong that the main character of the movie is not well-represented in what is clearly a huge piece of the Star Wars world, in terms of merchandising,” Abrams told reporters on Saturday after a Television Critics Association panel for his new Hulu series 11.22.63.

Hasbro has released a statement earlier this week though that they plan to rectify the situation. "We love the passion fans have for Rey, and are happy to announce that we will be making a running change to include her in the Monopoly: Star Wars game later this year,” they said in the statement. Hasbro said she wasn’t included to avoid revealing a key plot line.

Source: Mashable

Netflix is now available in over 190 countries

Safe to say Netflix had a rather big announcement at CES 2016. The company just launched in over 130 new countries around the world. Netflix Co-founder and Chief Executive Reed Hastings made the announcement at a keynote during CES. This gives the new countries access to Netflix’s original shows and movies. The company promises that this year they will release “31 new and returning original series, two dozen original feature films and documentaries, a wide range of stand-up comedy specials and 30 original kids series—available at the same time to members everywhere.”

Netflix has also added Arabic, Korean, Traditional and Simplified Chines to the 17 languages it supports. At the moment though, they still aren’t available in China, a big market that comes with a lot of restrictions. But they are supposedly working on options to provide the service there. It’s also still not available in Crimea, North Korea, and Syria due to US government restrictions on American companies. Netflix launched its service in 2007 and has expanded globally, first to Canada, then to Latin America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan to include 60 countries.