Over the past few days, I’ve been wrestling with whether or not to post these two stories. If they end up being true, they are pretty big news. I have my reservations about the validity of either, please read on to understand why!
Jim over at MarketSaw originally posted an “exclusive” that Lucasfilm was gearing up for a new Star Wars Trilogy in 3-D. Now the first thing that came to mind was Lucas and McCallum’s talk of converting the original trilogy to 3-D, so I thought “That’s not news” but that’s not what Jim was talking about… he was talking about an entirely new Trilogy that Lucas will be producing but NOT directing and he said that his trusted source also said that Steven Spielberg would be tapped to direct a STAR WARS movie and Francis Ford Coppola was also mentioned as a possible director for a future film.
There are a number of reasons that I thought this was too far fetched to even consider to be true, and Eric Vespe over at AICN sent an email to Laura Wuhlhammer of Lucasfilm’s Public Relations department an e-mail asking her to confirm or deny the rumor. She, of course, denied it, and then Lucasfilm Head of Fan Relations Steve Sansweet recently spoke with the fine folks at MovieGeekFeed during Star Wars Fan Days III and he agreed.
Watch the video below for Steve’s answer (at the 2:58 mark)
He said
It wasn’t a news item. It was something that somebody made up. It’s totally, totally ignorant and stupid, and even the people who picked it up and spread it along, said there’s no way this can be true. And of course there’s no way it can be true. You shouldn’t believe what you read on the internet. Take everything with a big grain of salt.
Now, personally I understand that even if this rumor ends up being true that Lucasfilm could choose to deny it until they’re damn good and ready to make it public. That being said, that makes the story unconfirmed and refuted by two Official Reps. from Lucasfilm and keeps it in the category of Rumor and NOT news.
On to the next story –
Just yesterday, Jim over at MarketSaw published yet another “exclusive” that Spider-Man 4 would have only one villain and that villain is The Lizard. Now, any fan could make the deduction that The Lizard MAY BE the (or A) Villain in the new Spidey movie based on the confirmation from Dylan Baker that he would be returning to reprise his role of Dr. Curt Connors in Spider-Man 4, but you could also argue that the yet unknown “significant role” that Raimi is working on for Bruce Campbell could be Mysterio or any other villain in Spidey’s world, which would make the Lizard being the only villain story null and void.
Now to wrap all of this up, we have Matt Goldberg over at Collider opening up a can of “Have some integrity-Whoop Ass” <-that’s my term, not his] all over Jim at MarketSaw, accusing him of essentially making up news and hit-whoring. I can totally understand Matt’s reasoning and frustration, especially if his accusations end up being true… I just hope it doesn’t come back to bite him in the ass.
So, what say you our humble readers… are the stories fact or crap? – do you buy what MarketSaw’s “sources” are selling? or do you think Matt may be on to something, is it all Bullsh!t aimed at building traffic and generating hits to their site?
For the record, I’m calling both the Star Wars and Spider-Man stories 100% rumor until there is confirmation from Studios and/or Directors.. I promised myself when we started this site to be honest to our readers and since we don’t honestly know for sure, I owe it to you to refrain from calling either story NEWS… but they are fun rumors, no?
