The production team behind HBO’s blockbuster “Game of Thrones” will be given the BAFTA Special Award at this year’s British Academy Television Craft Awards.
Hannah Murray and John Bradley from the hit series will collect the award on behalf of the team. BAFTA said the accolade is recognition of the boundaries that have been pushed across all areas of production in the making of the fantasy epic.
Filming is underway on the eighth and final six-episode season of “Game of Thrones,” which will air in 2019. HBO is working on several potential spinoffs.
The award also recognizes the support that “Game of Thrones” has provided for high-end TV production in the U.K., BAFTA said. The show has filmed across various locations in Northern Ireland and set up a production headquarters at Titanic Studios in Belfast, the Northern Irish capital, which has been a base for the series since the pilot.
Speaking on behalf of the production team, executive producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff said in a statement: “Many, many people work insanely hard to create any film or television show. They are creators every bit as much as actors, writers, producers or directors, and deserve to be recognized as such.”
“The craft behind what is one of the most popular dramas of our time is nothing short of incredible, from the breath-taking location shots to the intricately designed costumes and set pieces, and not forgetting the level of detail from the makeup and prosthetics team, to name a few,” added Krishnendu Majumdar, chair of BAFTA’s television committee. “Huge congratulations to everyone involved.”
The BAFTA Craft Awards take place on April 22 in London. They will be live streamed on YouTube and Twitter. [Source]
Star Wars will return to the Cannes Film Festival with the global premiere of Solo: A Star Wars Story, debuting out of competition on May 15.
Solo is not the first Star Wars film to debut at the star-studded event. Two of the prequel trilogy films, Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, also premiered out of competition in 2002 and 2005, respectively. Entertainment Weekly has additional details about the film festival’s ties to the franchise and Star Wars creator George Lucas.
Solo stars Alden Ehrenreich, stepping into Harrison Ford’s shoes as the young Han Solo, with Donald Glover as the Lando Calrissian, previously played by Billy Dee Williams. Game of Thrones actress Emilia Clarke, Westworld‘s Thandie Newton, and Woody Harrelson also have prominent roles in the movie.
The journey to Solo‘s release has been a turbulent one. Much like the first Star Wars standalone film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, released in 2016, Solo has had some production issues—to the point when Lucasfilm fired the film’s original directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, for “creative differences.” Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy replaced them with Hollywood veteran Ron Howard, and Lord and Miller will received executive producer credits.
Disney and Lucasfilm released the official teaser trailer to the next standalone film in the Star Wars franchise in February, and Howard confirmed via Twitter at the end of March that another full-length trailer would follow soon, although an exact date has not been announced yet.
Troubles on set reportedly settled down once Howard took the helm, based on Vulture‘s recent interview with an anonymous actor, who described two very different production environments before and after the directorial change. Given that it is a Star Wars film, Solo is almost guaranteed to do well at the box office—even the much maligned prequel films broke records.
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From the moment a Han Solo spin-off film was announced, audiences knew it would depict the smuggler’s adventures before he got involved with Luke, Leia, and the Rebel Alliance. A new infographic from Del Rey Books offers more specifics on the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story’s timeframe, putting the events of the film roughly 11-14 years before the events of the original Star Wars.
If you head over to Del Rey’s website, you can explore an interactive timeline of the Star Wars universe. The events of the film take place after the novel Tarkin but before the novel Thrawn, which both have fixed points in time. Knowing that Solo unfolds in between those two novels narrows down the window, allowing for enough time after this film and before A New Hope to even account for a follow-up film, were Lucasfilm interested.
While we have a better idea of how this film fits into the larger Star Wars narrative, the film will still cover multiple years in the scoundrel’s life. Star Emilia Clarke recently shared some details about her character, which helped confirm the depiction of Han’s evolution.
“The point where you meet her, she is with Han. They are both doing what they’ve got to do to survive,” Clarke told Entertainment Weekly. “And that is Qi’ra the whole the movie. The whole way through, she is surviving. And surviving in the underworld that we know to be [filled with] smuggling, aloof gamblers, wrong-side-of-the-tracks nasty ones. It was beautiful they touched on it very briefly [in The Last Jedi] when they are at the racetracks.”
The tie-in novel, Last Shot, will also depict various defining moments in Han’s life.
“Part of it takes place before the events of Solo and focuses on Lando and L3-37,” Lucasfilm Publishing creative director Michael Siglain explained of the story to Entertainment Weekly. “Part of it takes place between Solo and A New Hope, and that focuses on Han and Chewie, and that’s where we get Sana Starros for the first time.”
“Part of it takes place post-Return of the Jedi,” Siglain added, “And that’s where we see Han, Leia, a very young Ben Solo, and Lando come into the story.”
Specific details about the film’s plot are still kept closely under wraps, but as we get closer to the film’s release date, we’re unearthing more information about the highly-anticipated movie.
Solo: A Star Wars Story hits theaters on May 25th. [Source]
It’s official: The Time’s Up initiative is gaining global traction—and there’s receipts to back it up.
On Sunday, ahead of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards, 190 women working in the entertainment industry in the U.K. signed their names to an open letter announcing their intention to support and continue the Time’s Up movement that began across the pond.
“In autumn of last year, when stories came out in the press about sexual harassment, discrimination and abuse in the entertainment industry, 700,000 female farm workers wrote to us to say they stood with us in solidarity,” the letter, which was published in The Guardian, reads. “Their letter explained that they knew what we were going through, that they stood shoulder to shoulder with us in our pain and in our belief that a better world was possible. This solidarity between women — activists and survivors — across all industries is what inspired Time’s Up and what continues to galvanize us.”
The letter added that the movement is bigger than just the entertainment industry, and is instead intersectional, reaching people “across race, class, community, ability and work environment, to talk about the imbalance of power.”
“Here in the UK, this movement is at a critical juncture,” the letter read, further explaining that the gender pay gap there for young women in their 20s is “now five times greater than it was six years ago. Research in the UK has found that more than half of all women said they have experienced sexual harassment at work.” The letter noted that women working as freelancers or contractors are particularly vulnerable to harassment and abuse.
“There is no question that Time’s Up should be and will be a global movement,” it continued. “A movement that is defined and led by those affected by the problem, not by those in power.”
The letter was signed by Emma Watson, Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Emilia Clarke, and more.
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