May 4 seems like the right day to be publicising new pictures and details from this December’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which is why Vanity Fair picked it to run some images from its big cover feature shot by star photographer Annie Leibovitz, who visited the set last year.
Among the information carried by the magazine’s online piece on the photoshoot and film is final confirmation that Driver is playing the villainous Kylo Ren (and that he wields the much-discussed “broadsaber”), and, much more interestingly, we know that Lupita Nyong’o is playing a pirate named Maz Kanata and that her character will be brought to life using CGI based on her performance capture work.
Also in the piece? Co-writer/director J.J. Abrams joking about revealing the fate of one particularly controversial character (“I have a thought about putting Jar Jar Binks’s bones in the desert there.” Abrams says about a shot from the film. “I’m serious! Only three people will notice, but they’ll love it”) and talking about the note he gave Harrison Ford on playing Han Solo this time. “I knew that he had done in some movies a kind of more growly thing, and I didn’t want Han to be growly,” he says. “There was a fire in his eyes that you see in the movie.” For more images, head here. And for other details, you’ll want to point your browser here.
Looking ahead to the future, there was also an announcement about where Rian Johnson will be shooting his first entry, Episode VIII. You might not be shocked to learn that the Star Wars production team will be headed back to Pinewood for the main stage sets. There’s no set date for when things will kick off, but the film will be out on May 26, 2017.
As for The Force Awakens, that arrives on December 18.