The Future Looks Bright For Star Wars Fans! What Comes Next?

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" smashed box-office records, taking only 12 days to gross $1 billion and only 20 to become the highest-grossing domestic film. The film has successfully rebooted the "Star Wars" franchise and set high expectations for the Disney-produced films to follow, which will consist of six films total through 2020.

In addition to Episodes VII-XI, three stand-alone spin-off films make up the Anthology series. "Rogue One," the first, will hit theaters December 16, 2016, and has a new trailer. A Han Solo origin film and Boba Fett film will round out the series for now.

Disney is continuing to invest in strong female leads. Many were pleased that Star Wars: The Force Awakens starred a fierce heroine, Daisy Ridley, as its lightsaber-wielding Jedi disciple warrior. The trailer for Rogue One confirms that the spinoff, too, will have a female lead, with Oscar nominee (and fellow Brit) Felicity Jones playing Jyn Erso, a rebellious fighter forced to complete a dangerous mission.

Aside from Jones, the cast includes Riz Ahmed, Diego Luna, Jiang Wen, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, Mads Mikkelsen, Donnie Yen, and Alan Tudyk as a motion-capture character.

But Disney might not stop making Star Wars movies in 2020, a new report indicates, as the company is apparently planning at least five more standalone pictures on top of the ones that are currently in development.

“There are some really cool things being discussed. It is very exciting to see how it is being put together,” J.J. Abrams told The Sun, which also reports that Disney is working on projects focusing on new and legacy characters. Movies for Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mace Windu are among the ideas Disney execs are toying with.

I'm probably most excited about Rogue One and the other anthology movies. Sound off on our Forcestrong Facebook Group (30,000+ Members) and let us know what you're most excited to see.

Darth Vader PS4 Pre-Order With 2 Bundle Options!

Last month, the Darth Vader PS4 was announced. On Friday September 11th, pre-orders opened up at Amazon, Gamestop, Best Buy, Target & Wal-Mart.

There are 2 bundles available, both selling for $449.99.

BUNDLE 1: Limited Edition Playstation 4 Star Wars Battlefront Bundle

*This bundle is available for pre-order at all 5 retailers*

500GB Darth Vader PS4 with custom controller

Star Wars Battlefront Deluxe Edition

Digital voucher to download 4 classic SW games playable on PS4 for the first time ever!

The classic games are:
The Super Nintendo title - Super Star Wars
Star Wars: Racer Revenge

Star Wars: Starfighter

Star Wars: Bounty Hunter

NOTE: There is also STANDARD PS4 Battlefront Bundle for $399.99 listed on Amazon, Best Buy & Target. THIS IS NOT the limited edition bundle, and it will not have the Darth Vader skin, controller, or digital game download voucher.

BUNDLE 2: WAL-MART EXCLUSIVE Playstation 4 Disney 3.0 Star Wars Bundle

* This bundle is ONLY available at Wal-Mart*

500GB Darth Vader PS4 with custom controller

Disney Infnity 3.0 Exclusive Star Wars Bundle Kit

Digital voucher to download 4 classic SW games playable on PS4 for the first time ever!

The classic games are:
The Super Nintendo title - Super Star Wars
Star Wars: Racer Revenge

Star Wars: Starfighter

Star Wars: Bounty Hunter

You can pre-order from Amazon HERE, and check the official source HERE by clicking the retailer of your choice! Best Buy & Target offer pre-orders from their own respective websites.

Don't forget to stop by and check out our Facebook page. You can also join our Facebook group and be a part of one of the largest Star Wars communities on Facebook.

Source: Playstation.com

Disney To Unwrap 15 Star Wars Toys Ahead of Force Friday

It's a well known fact by now that at the stroke of midnight signifying the end of September 3rd and the beginning of September 4th, toy retailers are going to swing their doors open for countless consumers who would have been waiting all night to get their hands on all the new Star Wars toys from various manufacturers.

What wasn't known until just recently, is that Disney plans to have a GLOBAL UNBOXING EVENT ahead of Force Friday.

This event will take place on September 3rd and be telecast across the world!

UPDATE: Thanks to additional information on StarWars.com, we now know that this will be an 18 hour event. The live stream will be broadcast on the official Star Wars YouTube channel. A YouTube personality will unbox one toy per location.

Schedule posted below:

As you can see above, the first item will be unwrapped in Sydney, Australia, and from there it's a globe-trotting adventure across 13 additional locations including before finaly coming to an end at location 15: LucasFilm Studios in San Francisco, CA.

Funko Toys coming out Sept. 4th!  Forcestrong Original Meme.

The end of the event will signal the beginning of Force Friday when all the toy stores open up their doors to the waiting masses!

Fans are being encouraged to document their experiences and post them online with the hashtag #ForceFriday.

We also encourage you all to post your experiences to our Facebook Page & Facebook Group where we plan on featuring them in a future article! You can use the hashtag #Forcestrong or #ForceFriday. Thanks and share with your friends!



Source: Engadget
Updates: StarWars.com

Disneyland Unveils Star Wars & Marvel Expansion Plans

As if we didn't already know this was going to happen, Disneyland unveiled plans to expand it's attractions to include Star Wars and Marvel. We've all suspected for some time that this would happen, and the recent announcement of a 3 parcel purchase in Anaheim, CA by Disney only strengthened this suspicion. 

Well, Disney Imagineers unveiled concept art and overhead mapping of how they will set forth in making all this magic happen.

Concept art of the common area when entering the Star Wars section at Disneyland CA

Based on the images below, the Star Wars themed area will be in Disneyland, while the Marvel area will be at their California Adventure park. Looks like those park hopper tickets are going to be a necessity if you want to see both "lands".

As you can see in the image above, Disney will be taking a chunk of Frontier land and combine it with 2 of the parcels to expand the north end of the park into the Star Wars themed area. Most of the rides will be inside structures, so you can expect to see Star Tours moved from Tomorrowland into the new section as well. Disney imagineers are sworn to secrecy via disclaimers and contracts as designs will incorporate plots points, locations and characters from all the Star Wars movies. The design phase is going on at a secret location in Glendale, CA.

D23 Expo UPDATE: Disney announced that among the attractions in the new Star Wars theme area, guests will experience flying the Millennium Falcon, and being in the midst of a battle between The First Order and the Resistance.

The Marvel themed area (photo below) will incorporate the 3rd parcel and a good chunk of one of their cast member parking lots located behind the Tower of Terror at Disneyland's California Adventure Park.

It is said that both new "lands" will rely on "trackless car" attractions, but may also include conventional roller coaster style rides as well. To those unfamiliar with the term "trackless car", think Universal Studios Transformer style attractions, but themed for Marvel & Star Wars. The new areas will also include shows, and of course....themed merchandise!

Naturally, both new additions are going to affect the parking situation, so the engineers will have to come up with new parking solutions for the influx of guests as well as the loss of parking real estate from California Adventure. I wouldn't be surprised if they incorporate subterranean parking structures or even a few new multi-level parking structures over their existing single level lots.

Be sure to check back regularly for future updates about this story, and while your at it like and join our FB page and FB group for instant updates about all things Star Wars!

Source: TheMarySue.com

Could Marvel & Star Wars Networks Be On The Horizon?

It's a well known fact that Marvel has evolved into a multi-billion dollar enterprise under the Disney umbrella, cranking out one blockbuster after another in theaters, and successful TV programing. It's also well known that before joining the Disney-side (heh heh heh), Star Wars was already an unrivaled Sci-Fi/Fantasy powerhouse with a global fan base. Under the guidance of Disney, that success is now growing exponentially.

There is only so much you can do with solid franchises when you already have the market cornered on movies, books, merchandising, celebratory events and television series. The next logical step would be to create a media outlet built around them. Well, it appears that day may not be too far off.

Straight from the mouth of Disney CEO Bob Iger comes news that the House of Mouse is considering putting together branded TV channels specifically for Marvel and Star Wars. 

Should this project come to fruition, whether each franchise will get it's own channel or if it's going to be a single channel dedicated to both is still up in the air.

My hope is separate channels for each.

Two things to consider should this really happen:

1. Fans will be soon be able to get a daily fix of their preferred franchise all in one place. I don't know about you, but that's a dream come true for me!
    
2. To have branded TV channels, you need content. LOTS of content. While Marvel is well stocked in this area, Star Wars is not. All they've got are the movies, Star Wars Rebels, the upcoming Star Wars: Droids series and the as-of-yet still rumored Star Wars live action TV show. This means that Disney will be working on many new projects to fill up time slots. I don't know about you, but I can never get enough of Star Wars....Well except for the Christmas Special and the spin-off Ewok movies (Granted, the latter was for children).

We'll definitely be keeping an eye on this story and bring you any new developments that come to light!

To give us a like, share, or just to express your thoughts and opinions about this, head over to our Marvel and Star Wars Facebook Groups! Not a member yet? What are you waiting for? Join us NOW!

Sources: CinemaBlend, Comicbook,com

Turns Out, The Mouse CAN Use The Force! In defense of the Disney ownership.

I'm enjoying the writing, art, and quality of Marvel's new Star Wars comic line.  The action, violence, and story have been shocking unlike Disney.  Which is comforting to me.  I want to make sure that they follow this model for the movies and future properties.  Right now, it looks VERY promising.  I'm happy!

Looks like I'm not the only one.  Jacob Hall from ScreenCrush writes:

Disney didn’t buy ‘Star Wars’ so it could navigate a labyrinth of pre-existing novels, comics, and video games. More specifically, Disney didn’t buy ‘Star Wars’ so it could appease the niche group of fans who have kept up with the increasingly complicated Expanded Universe. It bought ‘Star Wars’ to please the much larger audience of everyone else. 

So Marvel’s new line of ‘Star Wars’ comics, which are officially part of the new canon that also includes the ‘Star Wars Rebels’ animated series, are an interesting beast. After all, Marvel is another relatively recent Disney acquisition. These aren’t like the countless ‘Star Wars’ tales published by Dark Horse Comics over the past 20-plus years, which were sanctioned by Lucasfilm but generally made independently. Now Disney controls ‘Star Wars’ from top to bottom ... and the results, like the brand new ‘Darth Vader’ series, have been shockingly, surprisingly good.

I couldn't agree more.

In stark contrast to their competition across the aisle, the Marvel of recent years has embraced an eclectic mix of writers and artists, giving them access to the strangest corners of their superhero universe and publishing series that have been joyously offbeat. That sense of good taste has already extended to their new ‘Star Wars’ comics, with writer Jason Aaron and artist John Cassaday’s ‘Star Wars’ title (now two issues deep) shattering industry records and for good reason: it’s a terrific comic book. However, it’s writer Kieron Gillen and artist Salvador Larroca’s ‘Darth Vader’ #1 that really suggests how exciting and weird the new ‘Star Wars’ canon may be.

I really love Marvel but I have to agree here.  Too many offshoots that get in the way.

The key has been the same approach that has made Marvel comics so wonderful over the past few years: diversity. Don’t like ‘Darth Vader’? That’s okay, because Marvel is releasing a ‘Princess Leia’ miniseries from the superstar team of Mark Waid and Terry Dodson. Burnt by the prequels? Don’t fret, these new comics are OT to their core.

It’s this willingness to embrace so many different angles and accept so many different approaches to this universe that have lapsed fans all-the-more excited for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens.’ Maybe history will prove everyone wrong ‘The Phantom Menace’-style, but as of this moment, Disney seems to be letting creative people play in this sandbox and do as they please. If there is extensive supervision, it’s not readily apparent. After all, Gillen’s signature is all over ‘Darth Vader,’ with the writer of ‘Phonogram’ and ‘The Wicked and the Divine’ shaping the ‘Star Wars’ universe around his personal style. As someone who felt all of his enthusiasm for ‘Star Wars’ drain away after the prequels, and whose few attempts to dive into the original EU were rebuffed by impenetrable storytelling, this open-ended, artist-driven approach is a joy to witness.

Read the Full Article Here.

Let us know what you think about the new ownership.

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