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Forget the Oscars. Ignore the Baftas. Don’t even consider the Golden Globes. The only awards show worth your time is the Three Empire Awards, even if we do say so ourselves. The 22nd edition of the ceremony from the world’s biggest-selling movie magazine took place in a glitzy bash at London’s Roundhouse, with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them among the biggest winners, with all competitive awards voted for by the public.
The acclaimed Star Wars spin-off took home three of the biggest prizes, including Best Film, Best Actress for Felicity Jones, and Best Director for Gareth Edwards, who joked: “This is not the first time we’ve infiltrated the Empire and caused an upset.”
Source : empireonline.com
With the new Rogue One trailer dropping Thursday night, Entertainment Weekly has been posting a week of new stories about the upcoming stand-alone Star Wars film. Here’s part five.
It was a meeting at dawn in hushed restaurant when Felicity Jones found herself recruited for a covert mission.
Director Gareth Edwards (previously best known for Godzilla) had recently signed on to make Rogue One, the first Star Wars stand-alone film about the Rebel soldiers who steal the original Death Star blueprints, and he was considering her as the big sister to lead this band of brothers.
“We were both working at the time and we met at something like 5:30 a.m. in a hotel restaurant,” Jones recalls. “Most of the meeting was conducted in whispers as he explained the story and the character. My first introduction was definitely one shrouded in secrecy and being very careful no one overheard what we were talking about.”
With the movie opening Dec. 16, she’s finally at the stage when she can talk about it. But The Theory of Everything Oscar-nominee has a lot more to discuss, too. She’s in three other movies opening this year: the action-thriller Collide (Aug. 19), the bittersweet supernatural tale A Monster Calls (Oct. 21), and the third Da Vinci Code film Inferno (Oct. 28.) 
Our own world is no stranger to battles over sacred land.
The ancient history that stands atop such places is often swept aside for invaders to claim the resources that lie beneath. In Rogue One, an entire planet becomes this kind of combat zone – Jedha, a holy land for those who follow the Force.
“The Force is basically in Star Wars like a religion, and they’re losing their faith in the period that we start the movie,” says Gareth Edwards, director of the story that’s set just prior to the events of 1977’s original Star Wars.
“We were trying to find a physical location we could go to that would speak to the themes of losing your faith and the choice between letting the Empire win, or evil win, and good prevailing,” he says. “It got embodied in this place we called Jedha.”
With its narrow market alleyways, desert sands, and Ottoman-inspired architecture, Jedha has obvious Middle Eastern influences, but it could be any place where far-flung followers would gather to pray, reflect, or meditate – Mecca, Jerusalem, Canterbury, Bodh Gaya…
“It’s a place where people who believe in the Force would go on a pilgrimage,” Edwards says. “It was essentially taken over by the Empire. It’s an occupied territory… for reasons we probably can’t reveal.”
Jyn Erso is coming for the Rio Olympics. As revealed in a new commercial, the next trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will air Thursday during the Summer Games, coverage of which airs on NBC.
The announcement spot, featuring footage from the previous trailer, was caught by a Twitter user and posted online, after which Lucasfilm confirmed the trailer debut in a tweet. It’s unclear exactly what we’ll see, but the film’s panel hosted by Gwendoline Christie during Star Wars Celebration Europe screened footage that, among other things, revealed Darth Vader’s big-screen return.
Rogue One, directed by Godzilla’s Gareth Edwards, stars Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso, enlisted by the Rebels to steal the plans for the Death Star that would later be used in the original Star Wars trilogy to take it down.
Also featured are Diego Luna as Captain Cassian Andor, Alan Tudyk as droid K-2SO, Mads Mikkelsen as Galen Erso, Ben Mendelsohn as Director Orson Krennic, and Forest Whitaker as Star Wars: The Clone Wars character Saw Gerera. Learn more about the characters here.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will debut in theaters on Dec. 16.
Source: EW
Singapore. The Italian city of Florence, birthplace of Italian poet Dante Alighieri, will stage the world premiere of “Inferno,” the third film to be adapted from the Dan Brown novels about symbologist Robert Langdon.
“I’m happy to say it is in beautiful Florence in Italy,” Ron Howard, director of all the three previous films, told Reuters in Singapore on Tuesday (14/06), adding that the location was appropriate given that the city was the “centerpiece of the movie.”
The premiere will be on Oct. 8.
“Inferno” sets Harvard symbologist Langdon, played by Tom Hanks, on a manhunt as he races to stop a plot to control the world’s population by the unleashing of a deadly artificial plague.
The film is the latest in line from the blockbuster book and film franchise that began with Brown’s 2003 religious-themed mystery novel “The Da Vinci Code,” and sees Hanks reprising the role of the character he once described as “the smartest guy in the room.”
The movie’s name and many of the symbols examined by Langdon draw largely from the life and works of Alighieri, whose greatest literary achievement was the 14th-century “Divine Comedy” trilogy, the first of which is entitled “Inferno.” and describes nine circles of suffering in hell.
The film also stars British actress Felicity Jones and Indian actor Irrfan Khan, while Ben Foster plays the scientist who intends on releasing the virus to solve the world’s population increase.
Source: Jakarta Globe
‘Rogue One’ rundown
Spies are everywhere. Although some of the names of the characters from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story have leaked out, their exact histories and descriptions have remained mostly under wraps. With EW’s new cover story, we’re revealing the official dossier on each of the new heroes – and the galaxy’s shrewd new villain.
Thursday, we’ll showcase new images from the film. Now, enjoy this rundown of who’s who …
Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones)
A streetwise delinquent who has been on her own since 15, she has fighting skills and a knowledge of the galactic underworld that the Rebel Alliance desperately needs. “She’s got a checkered past,” says Lucasfilm president and Rogue One producer Kathleen Kennedy. “She has been detained [by the Rebellion] and is being given an opportunity to be useful. And by being useful, it may commute her sentence… She’s a real survivor. She becomes a kind of Joan of Arc in the story.”
Source: Entertainment Weekly
Perhaps JJ Abrams set the bar a little too high when Star Wars: A Force Awakens was released in December: now the cast and crew of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story are said to be re-shooting parts of the spin-off film in July because the movie is not good enough.
New York showbiz website Page Six reports that Rogue One is “in crisis”, with executives at Disney unsatisfied with the first cut by British director Gareth Edwards.
Edwards, who has won cult acclaim for his direction of indie hit Monsters, has traditionally kept his distance from studios when making films, even on 2014 blockbuster Godzilla. However, Page Six report that on Rogue One, “Disney won’t take a back seat, and is demanding changes, as the movie isn’t testing well.”
The cast and crew will embark upon four weeks of re-shoots in July.
A source from Disney told Page Six: “The filmmaking team and the studio always anticipated additional shooting and second unit work to make the film the absolute best it can be, and the actors were aware there would be additional shooting.
“Coming off The Force Awakens, there’s an incredibly high bar for this movie and we have a responsibility to the franchise and to the fans to deliver the best possible movie we can.”
Rogue One is thought to fill in the gap between Episodes III and IV, and will see resistance fighters attempt to steal plans for the Death Star before the Emperor can use it to enforce his cruel regime.
The film’s cast list boasts Oscar-winner Felicity Jones, Forest Whitaker, Mads Mikkelsen, Diego Luna and Ben Mendelsohn. It has been speculated that Rogue One will also feature Darth Vader and a young Han Solo – who will be played by Alden Ehrenreich in Disney’s second Star Wars spin-off film – in a cameo role.
A representative for Disney said that they “don’t usually comment on any production rumours relating to Star Wars.”
Source: Telegraph
    
Now the Force Awakens haze has ascended, all eyes are on the next Star Wars property to be released – prequel Rogue One.
A trailer surfaced last month providing a glimpse of many actors confirmed to be in the film – Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn – but, save for Jones’ rebel protagonist Jyn Erso, the brief clip gave no details on any of the film’s characters.
However, JediBibliothek has somehow unearthed the film’s visual guide (we should note that it’s a work in progress) which has thrown forth some exciting information surrounding these characters and their allegiances.
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