Shooting begins on Star Wars: Episode VII in the desert this week. Plus some more details on the cast...
With the big casting announcement now out of the way, production on Star Wars: Episode VII is set to begin in earnest this week. The National reports that shooting will start in the Abu Dhabi desert tomorrow, which is expected to double for Tatooine in the new movie.
It's being reported that a city has been constructed in said desert for the film, including a house, plenty of vehicles, a "big, centuries-old looking market" and a "shuttle-like" spacecraft. Shooting is set to take place there for the next few weeks.
The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, meanwhile, has revealed that the return of Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher to Star Wars had been sorted out even before Disney bought Lucasfilm back in 2012. Furthermore, building on earlier reports, EW reckons that Han Solo will be one of the lead characters, alongside three of the new additions to the cast. Ford, Hamill and Fisher will all have "significant" roles in Star Wars: Episode VII.
The delay in casting the film's other roles, meanwhile, was due to the overhauling of the original screenplay to the movie, that had been penned by Michael Arndt. JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan's shooting draft is notably different, hence the hold up.
Finally, with casting yet to be complete on the new movie, Michael Fassbender has been the latest to be coy of potentially being involved. When asked by Latino Review if he was in Star Wars, Fassbender replied "wouldn't you like to know". However, lest we all read too much into this, we suspect that it was a retort more in the spirit of the conversation than anything more than that.
Star Wars: Episode VII is in cinemas on December 18th 2015.
Jedi News.
The National.
Latino Review.
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