New ‘Star Wars – The Force Awakens’ Set Images Released

Following on from its successful launch at this year’s Comic Con, new and exclusive on-set images have been released of Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens in this months issue of Entertainment Weekly.

Hailed as one for the movie events of the past Century, J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars sees the franchise return of its three original heroes Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill, who resurrect their iconic characters for the first time in three decades.

Abrams, the visionary behind the new Disney-led saga, has promised a truly authentic Star Wars that uses the same filmmaking techniques as the original trilogy, including the use of real sets instead of Green-screen CGI – something fans feel strongly about after the critical flops of the last trilogy, that spurred creator George Lucas to sell Lucasfilm (and all Star Wars rights) to Disney for a reported $4.5 billion.

Check out some of the newly released images below and remember to catch Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens when it hits cinemas this Christmas.

‘Fantastic Four’ Not So Fantastic

Thing’s aren’t going well for the Fantastic Four reboot – with critics and Marvel fans having panned it early on, the blockbuster has now seen it’s woes go from bad to worse box office figures show the film is set to flop in major style having taken only $26.2 million in its opening weekend in the US.

Reports suggest that the Brian Trank directed origins story could lose Twentieth Century Fox as much as $70 million during, what’s likely to be, a short release at the worldwide box office – certainly a lot of money considering the project cost an estimated $140 million to produce as well as a hefty marketing budget.

Things seemed doomed from the beginning (no pun intended), when director Brian Trank tweeted his followers the night before the film’s release and pretty much ridiculed the blockbuster.

The tweet was quickly deleted but by then it was too late, the damage had already been done and criticism quickly began flowing in – the film received 9% on industry leading review site Rotten Tomatoes as well as 4.0 out of 10 on IMDb.

Despite boasting a young, talented and up-and-coming cast including Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell, it’s looks like any possibility of a new Fantastic Four franchise is dead in the water, with rumours circulating that Fox could pull plans for a sequel and replace its intended release date with a Deadpool sequel – something that may prove to be a sensible financial move for the studio.

X-Men To Team Up With The Fantastic Four In An Epic Crossover?

The seems to be rumours circulating the Internet at the moment regarding a possible X-Men/Fantastic Four crossover that’s making everyone ridiculously excited – and for obvious reasons.

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) director Bryan Singer recently teased the possible blockbuster team-up during an interview – though he was very careful not to give official confirm anything, I think we can all guess this is going to happen at some point in the near future as its proven time and again to be a winning formula.

During the interview with Yahoo Movies, Singer mentioned that “ideas were in play” but that any crossover collaboration would depend on the success of upcoming Marvel releases X-Men: Apocalypse and The Fantastic Four reboot.

As with any superhero concept, Marvel always plays its cards close to the chest, but Singer was very forthcoming at the potential direction of these franchises, saying that “[the crossover] would be a natural match-up because they’re both enemble films and there is a mechanism to do it…”

Details about any potential plots, cast and release dates were very much absent from the interview but Singer did give a little hint that “it deals with time”, perhaps a similar concept to his previous film X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) and the core principle of inter-dimensional travel that will be seen in the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot, and of course has been seen in the hugely successful Avengers franchise.

Sadly all we can do at this point is be patient and hope that box office success brings with awesome concept to life – X-Men: Apocalypse is due for release next year but you can catch The Fantastic Four (2015) when they hit cinemas next month (August).

Check out Bryan Singer’s interview with Yahoo Movies regarding all things X-Men,