logo
Lucasfilm Reveals ‘The Ninth Jedi' Series at Star Wars Celebration in Tokyo

Lucasfilm Reveals ‘The Ninth Jedi' Series at Star Wars Celebration in Tokyo

Yahoo20-04-2025

Lucasfilm leaders had more surprises on the final day of the three-day Star Wars Celebration fan event in Tokyo. A new batch of nine 'Star Wars: Visions' shorts will debut Oct. 29 on Disney+, and also upcoming is the longform series 'The Ninth Jedi,' a spinoff of an earlier 'Visions' short, from writer-director Kenji Kamiyama.
'The Ninth Jedi' series was announced with fanfare at the event by James Waugh, Lucasfilm's senior VP of franchise content and dtrategy at Lucasfilm. He called Kamiyama to the stage, 'who thanked the audience for being so supportive and enthusiastic about the adventures of Kara and Juro in 'The Ninth Jedi' and the upcoming 'Child of Hope,' according to Disney's StarWars.com official fan site.
More from Variety
Star Wars to Launch Biggest-Ever 'Fortnite' Game Tie-In
'Star Wars Zero Company' Game to Launch in 2026 From Electronic Arts, Story Set During the Clone Wars
'Star Wars' Darth Maul Animated Series Coming to Disney+ Next Year, With Sam Witwer Voicing Villain
'He then announced that fans will watch Kara's journey continue to unfold in an all-new spinoff called 'Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi,' the site stated.
More to come
(Pictured: The stage at Star Wars Celebration Japan in Tokyo)
Best of Variety
New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week
What's Coming to Disney+ in April 2025
The Best Celebrity Memoirs to Read This Year: From Chelsea Handler to Anthony Hopkins

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Miley Cyrus Just Made An Unexpected Admission About Her Dua Lipa Duet
Miley Cyrus Just Made An Unexpected Admission About Her Dua Lipa Duet

Yahoo

time31 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Miley Cyrus Just Made An Unexpected Admission About Her Dua Lipa Duet

Miley Cyrus has made a surprising admission about her collaboration with Dua Lipa. In 2020, Miley and Dua – both riding high off the song Midnight Sky and the album Future Nostalgia, respectively – teamed up for the duet Prisoner, which went on to appear on the former's Plastic Hearts. However, looking back five years later, the Flowers singer admitted she's not sure the Dua duet really fit in with the rest of her material at the time. During a career retrospective interview on the podcast Every Single Album, Miley was asked 'why the fuck' Dua ever wound up on Plastic Hearts, to which the former Disney star admitted: 'It wasn't my idea.' 'No shade to Dua but Prisoner just isn't cohesive with the album,' she claimed, adding that Dua 'would have been much better on something in Endless Summer Vacation', the album which spawned the hits Flowers, River and Used To Be Young. 'She would've been great on Wildcard or River,' Miley added, naming Endless Summer Vacation cuts that she thinks her fellow Grammy winner's vocals would have suited. Prisoner peaked at number eight in the UK, sparking comparisons with Pat Benatar and Blondie from some critics, and ended up being included on the re-released version of Dua's Brit Award-winning album Future Nostalgia. Interestingly, despite Miley's assertion she meant 'no shade' to the British singer, her comments come as fans have speculated that a song on her most recent album Something Beautiful is a diss at Dua. On the track Every Girl You've Ever Loved (which happens to feature a spoken-word section from supermodel Naomi Campbell), lyrics refer to a girl who 'has the perfect scent', 'speaks the perfect French' and 'can dance the night away' without ever 'breaking a sweat'. Some fans felt this was a deliberate reference to Dua, who is the face of an Yves Saint Laurent perfume, sang in French on the Angèle collaboration Fever and was nominated for an Oscar for her Barbie cut Dance The Night. Miley Cyrus Admits Regret Over Her Public Beef With Sinéad O'Connor Miley Cyrus Breaks Silence On Popular Jennifer Lawrence Flowers Music Video Theory Miley Cyrus Sets The Record Straight On Her 'Estrangement' With Dad Billy Ray Cyrus

'Andor' showrunner denies hit 'Star Wars' show is a 'left-wing' political story
'Andor' showrunner denies hit 'Star Wars' show is a 'left-wing' political story

Fox News

timean hour ago

  • Fox News

'Andor' showrunner denies hit 'Star Wars' show is a 'left-wing' political story

"Andor" series showrunner Tony Gilroy said Thursday he does not believe his "Star Wars" series is "left-wing." In an interview with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat on his podcast "Interesting Times," Gilroy denied that he wrote the show to represent a left-wing revolution against fascist authoritarians. "I never think about it that way. It was never- I mean, I never do. I don't," Gilroy declared in response to Douthat asking if he agreed the show is a "left-wing work of art." The second season of the critically acclaimed series debuted on Disney+ in April. It follows the adventures of Cassian Andor, a key player in the rebellion against the Galactic Empire. He was a main character in the hit 2016 movie "Rogue One." The show, which lasted two seasons, provides a dark and realistic depiction about how individuals ban together to resist a creeping authoritarian government that uses deception, censorship and violence to cement its own power. In the interview, Douthat said he believes Gilroy's depiction of the rebellion against the empire in the series is distinctly left-wing. While introducing his guest, he said, "The 'Star Wars' serial 'Andor' has somehow managed to pull off originality within the constraints of a familiar franchise, pleasing obsessive fans and critics alike. Part of its originality is that it has an explicitly political and, to my mind, left-wing perspective on its world, without feeling at all like tedious propaganda." Gilroy admitted the work was political in that it was inspired by his fascination with revolutions in world history. "The canvas that was being offered was just a wildly abundant opportunity to use all of the nonfiction and all the history and all the amateur reading that I'd done over the past 40 years and all the things I was fascinated by, all the revolution stuff that not only I would never have a chance to do again, but I really wondered if anybody else would ever have a chance to do again," he said. Elsewhere, he told Douthat that he was particularly inspired by dictatorships throughout history, like Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's regime. "I want to pay as much attention to the authoritarian side of this, the people who've cast their lot with the empire, who get burned by it all," he said. However, the showrunner denied he meant to portray the empire as a right-wing authoritarian government being undone by left-wing freedom fighters. "But it's a story, but it's a political story about revolutionary ––" the conservative columnist protested. Gilroy interjected, "Do you identify with the Empire? Do you identify with the Empire?" "No, I don't," Douthat said. "But I don't think that you have to be left-wing to resist authoritarianism. I see the Empire as you just described it: It's presented as a fascist institution that doesn't have any sort of communist pretense to solidarity or anything like that. It's fascist and authoritarian, and you're meditating on what revolutionary politics looks like in the shadow of all that."

How this S.F. company's $100 million gamble made ‘Lilo & Stitch' one of Disney's biggest hits
How this S.F. company's $100 million gamble made ‘Lilo & Stitch' one of Disney's biggest hits

San Francisco Chronicle​

time3 hours ago

  • San Francisco Chronicle​

How this S.F. company's $100 million gamble made ‘Lilo & Stitch' one of Disney's biggest hits

There's an old Hollywood adage, attributed to comedian W.C. Fields, that advises filmmakers and actors never to work with children or animals. Good thing the makers of the new live-action ' Lilo & Stitch ' didn't listen to such nonsense. In the less than two weeks since its release, the Disney film is one of the most beloved of the year, pulling in more than $600 million at the global box office. It is already the second-biggest Hollywood release of 2025, and has a good shot at supplanting ' A Minecraft Movie ' ($947 million) as the top earner. Obviously, one of the reasons it has become one of Disney's most successful live-action remakes is audiences' warm memories of the 2002 animated film. But a major factor is the undeniable chemistry between 6-year-old Maia Kealoha, who plays Lilo, and the beautifully realized 2025 version of Stitich, the tiny irrepressible alien who lands in Hawaii and becomes Lilo's chaotic companion. The secret to developing that relationship was spearheaded by Industrial Light & Magic, based at the Presidio in San Francisco. As the visual effects team was grappling with how to turn the 2D animated version into a fully fleshed-out CGI character, a crucial decision was made: to aid the-yet-to-be-cast child actress who would play Lilo, the $100 million production would use animatronic puppets to interact with her and serve as a visual guide for the VFX team. 'They immediately had a bond,' animation supervisor Matthew Shumway said during a recent Chronicle visit to ILM. 'Every day there would be cute moments on the set. It was really important to let (Maia) have a friend on set. It was really cute to see how black (Stitich's) nose was by the end of production; it was pretty rubbed off because she kissed it so much.' Shumway, who filmed test footage with his own 6-year-old daughter before Maia was cast, and visual effects supervisor Craig Hammack turned to Legacy Effects, a Los Angeles company that specializes in animatronic puppets (Grogu of ' The Mandalorian '), to create a series of Stitch puppets, including one suited for underwater scenes. Hayes called the child's performance 'huge.' 'A 6-year-old girl, a lot on her shoulders, and there's only one of her, you know?' Hayes said. 'She nailed the character, and she was very professional, and very impressive.' Hammack, a two-time Oscar nominee as visual effects supervisor on ' Deepwater Horizon ' (2017) and ' Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ' (2022), agreed. 'Maia was phenomenal — very honest, very focused,' he said. 'It didn't feel like (the production) was being tailored to a child in that everything was able to stay on track and very productive for the time we had with her.' Because Lilo first thinks Stitch is a dog, some of the character's movements were dog-like. In those scenes, a French Bulldog named Dale stood in for Stitch in scenes with Maia. The animal 'always gave a little bit of unpredictability,' Hammack noted, which added spontaneity to the film. Somewhere, the ghost of Fields was spinning. Blending live actors with animated characters has been a thing since at least 'Anchors Aweigh,' the 1945 MGM musical in which Gene Kelly famously danced with Jerry the Mouse. The landmark 1988 film 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' upped the ante. But counterintuitively, because of ILM's cutting-edge technology, 'Lilo & Stitch' was able to deliver something Kelly didn't have: a physical scene partner. 'Our work works because Seth did his job,' Shumway said. 'Without it, we would maybe get a stale performance from Maia. By the time it gets to (the VFX team), we digitally remove (the puppet), but then we've got all the other elements that benefited from the work that he did. Because Maya gave a really good performance, then we can give a really good performance with Stitch. 'So really, it's an old school process, but it's still very modern in how we approach it.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store