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Good morning Star Wars lovers. Wookiee Weekly again with the new issue and more interesting Star Wars content for their fans.

A-List movie star in Galaxy far far away-

Rumor is - Ryan Gosling in next Star Wars movie

Ryan Gosling is headed to the great galaxy far, far away.

The three-time Oscar nominee is in negotiations to topline the Star Wars feature project that will be directed by Deadpool & Wolverine filmmaker Shawn Levy. 

Details on any Star Wars project are harder to acquire than plans for an orbital planet killer, and this one is no exception. Levy has been developing his Star Wars feature since 2022 and Jonathan Tropper, who collaborated with Levy on films such as This Is Where I Leave You and The Adam Project, has been working on a script for over a year. Levy is also producing the feature via his 21 Laps banner, joining Star Wars stewards Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm.

It is unclear when Levy’s project is set. Star Wars stories have run the gamut of hundreds of years, detailing the goings-on of a galactic republic-turned-dictatorship-turned-rebellion. It’s also unclear if it concerns Jedis and their enemies, The Sith. It is, however, to be unconnected to the so-called Skywalker Saga, the stories centered on well-established and beloved characters Luke Skywalker and his father, Anakin.

It is meant to be a stand-alone movie, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. Lucasfilm had no comment on any impending deal or the project’s details.

Gosling’s boarding will mark a rare occasion that a Star Wars feature brings aboard an actual A-lister. The original trilogy featured up-and-comers and British veterans, turning actors Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher into household names. The prequels followed a similar model, although The Phantom Menace did bring on Liam Neeson to buttress the ranks following his Oscar nomination for Schindler’s List. The Disney era saw J.J. Abrams also introduce a crop of rising talent, even as it brought back the original stars.

In a bit of synchronicity, Gosling was name-checked for a Star Wars part back in 2013 when rumors spread online that he and Zac Efron were being eyed by Abrams for a familial part that may have eventually become Kylo Ren. source

Quote of the Week

Hairy Ventress

Asajj Ventress in #4 issue of The Bad Batch: Ghost Agents

The Bad Batch encountered Asajj Ventress for the first time on the planet Pabu, or so they thought…

In Dark Horse Comics’ new series Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories: The Bad Batch — Ghost Agents, Ventress graces the newly revealed cover of issue #4, taunting Clone Force 99 from the shadows. Unbeknownst to Clone Force 99, Asajj vexed the squad long before the events of the Disney+ series, and soon you can discover how the Separatist assassin executed a daring plot during The Clone Wars. When Ventress teams up with bounty hunter Aurra Sing, the Batch gets a preview of their encounter with Ventress in Star Wars: The Bad Batch season 3.

"I can't express enough just how thrilled I am to be writing more Bad Batch,” says writer Michael Moreci. “But any good hero needs good villains, and there's no better villain than Asajj Ventress. Sure, we had to pull some strings to make any encounter between them work, but we did just that — and the result is a fun, action-packed adventure.”

Plus, beyond the exclusive first look at the cover of issue #4, enjoy the exclusive reveal of the connecting variant covers that celebrate the original four members of the squad of defective and effective clone soldiers — Crosshair, Hunter, Wrecker, and Tech!

And, if you can’t wait for the mini-series to begin February 12, today you can read the first four pages of issue #1 right HERE: on this source link.

Trivia! 

Did you know?

"Whats the first line of Phantom Menace?“

“Captain.”

Three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics

Acolyte 2nd on TOP 10 watched shows on Disney+ in 2024

Luminate, the data analytics firm that is quickly becoming one of the industry’s go-to sources for third-party viewership reports, released a breakdown of what 2024 brought for film and TV. Among their conclusions, they broke down their estimates for the minutes watched on the top 10 Disney Plus originals and listed The Acolyte as the second most-watched Disney Plus series last year. But what is the larger story here? Data source

Before we start on this, it should be mentioned that these numbers are not coming from Disney Plus, but rather a company that uses several indirect ways of measuring and estimating the total minutes watched. The key word here is estimate, and it is something we should keep in mind at all times, since the actual numbers may be off. Additionally, they didn’t clarify but we’ll assume these numbers are US-only.

Luminate concluded that the most-watched original Disney Plus series in 2024 was Percy Jackson and the Olympians, with a total of 3B minutes watched. In second place came The Acolyte, with 2.673 billion minutes watched across the whole year (really, only the last seven months, given its early June premiere). That’s good, right? Well, let’s take a closer look.

Dividing by eight episodes of the series, this number would mean an average of 334M minutes watched per episode. For reference, according to Nielsen (another third-party analytics firm), Ahsoka‘s least-watched episode was the third one. The series accumulated 459M minutes watched during the week of that episode’s release. Moreover, during the seven weeks Ahsoka was on the air, Nielsen estimated a total of 4B minutes watched. Not the whole year. Just the seven weeks it was on the air. Luminate estimated that in 2024, i.e., months after the season had ended, Ahsoka accumulated over 800M minutes watched.

In general, a series that averages 334M minutes watched per week has a hard time cracking into Nielsen’s Top 10. And this number wasn’t The Acolyte‘s average for its seven weeks of release. It was the full year.

And the comparisons outside of Disney Plus become even more blunt. Take Taylor Sheridan’s Landman, a non-IP series starring Billy Bob Thornton that premiered on Paramount Plus, a service with less than half of Disney Plus’ global reach. According to Nielsen, Landman accumulated more minutes watched in its first four weeks of release than The Acolyte did all year. Sure, by then, the total runtime that Landman had accumulated may have been higher than The Acolyte‘s, but if we’re getting nitpicky when comparing these two series’ streaming performance, it’s more than evident that Star Wars is on the losing end here.

If anything, this report highlights how little viewership Disney Plus originals really have. The week that Squid Game Season 2 debuted on Netflix in December (a.k.a. Christmas week), Netflix’s total minutes watched on the Original Series Top 10 Nielsen chart were more than half of what Luminate reported for Disney Plus Original Series in the entire year.

The numbers on the feature films, boosted by new releases like Inside Out 2 or Deadpool & Wolverine, may tell a different story. But the conclusion from this report is not that The Acolyte should be renewed, or that the decision not to do it was the correct one. It’s that not that many people watched Disney Plus originals in 2024, at all. source

Cosplay of the Week

Mara Jade by reddit user veronica_sweet

Comic of the Week

Star Wars: Princess Leia’s Adventures

Star Wars: Princess Leia's Adventures is a canon young-readers book that will be published by DK on February 18, 2025.

Dorling Kindersley (also known as DK or DK Publishing) is an international publishing company specializing in reference books for adults and children.

DK was founded as a book-packaging company by Peter Kindersley and Christopher Dorling in London in 1974, and in 1982 moved into publishing. The first book published under the DK name was a First Aid Manual for the British voluntary medical services; this book established the company's distinctive visual style of copiously illustrated text on a glossy white background. DK Inc. began publishing in the United States in 1991.

The DK Star Wars contract was signed in 1997, and the company had published Star Wars books ever since.

In Germany the Star Wars books from Dorling Kindersley are published by VGS, a brand of the Disney publisher Egmont Ehapa Verlag, even though DK has a German subsidiary.

DK Publishing is one of the creators of Star Wars Reads Day, an annual celebration held in bookstores and libraries.

Publishers summary

Explore the galaxy with Princess Leia Organa in this high-quality, fun, nonfiction reader – carefully levelled to help children progress.

Learn more about Leia Organa and her family. Join the young royal on her mission with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Find out about her time as a rebel leader fighting Darth Vader and the Empire. Discover how Leia leads the Resistance to victory against the First Order.

The engaging text has been carefully levelled using Lexile so that children are set up to succeed. Exciting Star Wars images, clear vocabulary, and a fun quiz will test young readers and help them in building their reading ability as they learn about this galaxy, far, far away…
source

Meme of the week

THE END

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