A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

In 2011, even before Scribner (a division of Simon & Schuster) published Stephen King's time travel novel  11/22/63, director Jonathan Demme ( The Silence of the Lambs ) announced that he had acquired the film rights. He was intrigued by its premise - a 21st Century high school English teacher travels back in time to prevent John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963.  Demme would write the screenplay and direct the feature film, while King would be the project's executive producer. It was a good idea on paper, but the reality was something entirely different. According to Rolling Stone's Andy Greene, "[t]he book...had  a rather rocky first step on its road to the screen. Director Jonathan Demme was the first license to it, though King had complete veto power over every aspect of the project. "He was pretty adamant that it be a theatrical film," says the bestselling author. "It was like, 'Jon, I don't kno...

(C) 2015 Del Rey Books/Random House and Lucasfilm, Ltd. On September 4, 2015, three months before the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Del Rey Books (a division of Random House) published Chuck Wendig's Star Wars: Aftermath, the first book of the "new canon" Aftermath trilogy. Released as part of the Lucasfilm Story Group's Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Wendig's novel was one of many projects (comic book series, young adult novels, and reference works) that are intended to tell the story of what happened between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.  Like all Star Wars novels published since Disney-owned Lucasfilm scrapped the old Expanded Universe in the spring of 2014, Wendig's  Aftermath   trilogy is part of the "new canon" that includes the six original Saga films, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and the upcoming Star Wars: The Last Jedi.   A...

Pros:  Solid script. Great performance by James Sloyan.  Gripping Cold War-style tale Cons:  A few plot holes and other minor errors Although Gene Roddenberry did not conceive  Star Trek  as a "space war" action-adventure series when he pitched it to the Big Three networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) in the mid-1960s, he realized that if he wanted his show to be an outlet for socio-cultural commentary on American and world society he would need to create interstellar adversaries to his United Federation of Planets. Because in storytelling terms the Federation is a 23rd Century "America-in-futuristic-avatar," Roddenberry and the  Star Trek  writers created two different stand-ins for the now-vanished Soviet Union: the Romulan Star Empire and the Klingon Empire. a In  Star Trek: The Original Series  and its six feature film spin-offs ,  the Klingon Empire was the predominant "Soviet" stand-in, appearing in seven episodes of the 19...

(C) 2016 Del Rey Books/Random House and Lucasfilm Ltd. On December 20, 2016, four days after the theatrical release of director Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story , Del Rey Books (an imprint of Random House) published the novelization by Alexander Freed ( Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company ) Based on the story by John Knoll and Gary Whitta, and the screenplay by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story chronicles a pivotal event in the mythos created by George Lucas: how the Rebel spies acquired the plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon - the Death Star.  Set, of course, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away before the events in Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, Rogue One fleshes out the title crawl seen in the original 1977 movie: It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to ...

Gareth Edwards' blockbuster Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is a film that boasts many "firsts" in the history of the 40-year-old franchise created by George Lucas. It is the first stand-alone Star Wars film that's not centered on the Skywalker family It is the first Star Wars film that focuses on ordinary beings from various parts of the galaxy that aren't Jedi or Force users It is the first Star Wars film to identify most of the planets with onscreen tags It is the first Star Wars film with no title crawl, no transitional "wipes," and only the second to use a pan-up establishing shot (the other being Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones It is the first live-action Star Wars film without a musical score composed and conducted by John Williams Lucasfilm President (and Rogue One producer) Kathleen Kennedy and her creative team pulled all the stops to make Rogue One: A Star Wars Story a separate part of the Star Wars universe yet faithful...