Star Wars Spinoff Movie News: New Writer, Location and Character Details

Some news from the world of the mysterious Star Wars standalone movie has continued to make its way out into the world. Most of it is official, the rest just strengthens a few of the more credible things we've heard floating around about the project. This movie is about to go into production, so we expect that we'll get some kind of official reveal about the nature of it all soon enough.

For starters, the movie has a new writer. Writer Gary Whitta (The Book of Eli, After Earth) recently departed the project, leaving his draft in the hands of future writers. There were some initial reports that Simon Kinberg was the man for the job, as he's already been thoroughly involved with various aspects of the Star Wars revival under Disney. Now THRreports that it's Chris Weitz (writer and director of About a Boy and director of The Twilight Saga: New Moon who will write the Gareth Edwards directed film. A number of actresses are already reading for parts.

Production is likely to begin soon, and Making Star Warsreports that the film is working with a lower budget than the "core" Star Wars trilogy, it will reuse some sets from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and that crew now know when they're going to start. Sensible enough, since Disney plans on releasing one Star Warsmovie a year for at least the next six years. They also believe that there is more location shooting planned for this one, specifically in Mexico.

The most persistent name that has been thrown around since the standalone movies were first announced has been Boba Fett. At one point that one even appeared to have Joe Johnston working on it. Recently there have been reports that this is a bounty hunter heist movie. Latino Review now believe that this might be a movie that features both young Han Solo and Boba Fett...which I suppose doesn't rule out the possibility of this being a bounty hunter heist movie.

I have my doubts that we'll see any movie featuring recast versions of the original core until after the new core trilogy is complete, but I'm not basing that on any inside knowledge. I wrote more about the future of the Star Wars franchise here.

The first Star Wars standalone movie will arrive on December 16th, 2016.