JW Rinzler's video is out.
He reveals a lot but not too much as he is still bound by a non-disclosure agreement, but to summarize the questions and answers in the video:
1: For those of you who don't know who JW is, he is the writer of
The Making of [insert SW movie name here] books and basically was the keeper and new publisher of SW's production history starting from 2001 when he was first hired by Lucasfilm until getting canned by Disney in 2016, giving him a 15 year run with the company, and aside from writing reference books, he was also the mind behind the creation of SW: Visionaries, pitching the original idea which he then wrote the introduction for.
2: His last job at Disney-Lucasfilm was to write The Making of TFA, however it was clear from the beginning that Disney did not want this book to be made and simply went along with it for a while, and eventually had someone else finish it for JW, but even then JW was allowed to finish it, but Disney in the end chose not to publish it due to "policy" reasons. The production of TFA was apparently very troubled as was the conversion of Lucasfilm into a Disney company which officially began in 2014, with the internal culture of the company going through much change in 2014, which aligns with Disney's "Canon/EU Purge" at the time.
View attachment 1422241
3: After getting canned from Disney-Lucasfilm, JW began writing his tell-all blog which he dubbed "The Rise and Fall of Star Wars" and it would've covered everything starting from the beginning of his career with Lucasfilm in 2001 to his parting in 2016, with the blog itself being over "10 chapters long" and mostly covering how drastically things had changed after George foolishly sold the company, however while writing it, he was contacted by Disney's lawyers who then warned him in the "nicest way possible" (obviously doesn't want to break that NDA here lest he end up in debtor jail) to keep his mouth shut. He admits he was too naive to realize just how seriously Disney would take a blog which was apparently not even hateful or damaging, since he assumed the NDA was only to prevent talk that would reveal too much financial information or defame executives or something. He thinks the NDA is unfair and his agent told him to take down the blog because otherwise he would be forced to pay up 20,000 dollars. Since he didn't have the money, he gave up and shut down the blog.
4: He's asked if he liked or hated the Disney movies. He admits he only saw TFA and Rogue One but they weren't his cup of tea. Personal tastes aside, he also states that it was hard for him to enjoy them because "
he knew what was going on" and the movies were not made with visions in mind. Both films (since these were the only ones he was a part of) were conceived by committees in a boardroom (to no surprise from me). We know this to be a fact with Rogue One, and as for TFA there are contradictory accounts but judging from JJ, Kennedy and Kasdan's comments, this is likely accurate for TFA as well (of course you don't need someone to tell you that based on what a soulless and corporate-approved retread that shit was, but it feels good to see it being openly stated), and that while he knows that George is not perfect, George would've been preferable. He hasn't seen TLJ, IX or Solo since he has no personal investment or involvement with those.
5: His cats are doing fine, but Stinky died... His new Aliens book is dedicated to her.
6: He was part of the season 4 writing team of Filoni Wars. George picked JW to "rehabilitate" Jar Jar Binks, which resulted in the Jar Jar and Windu arc, and he was the one who created a love interest for Jar Jar in the form of Queen Julia. However, despite being credited as the writer for both episodes, JW claims his original scripts actually went mostly unused or were completely changed, with the only thing that stuck was Jar Jar's gf and nothing else. Personally, I can only assume Filoni chopped up whatever JW made as Rinzler lists him as the head writer (he compliments him and says it was an honor being at the same table as him, but then he pauses and swallows nervously as he mentions Filoni being the "head writer") and the episodes themselves also heavily retconned the Phuii species which I can only assume is Filoni's doing since Rinzler created a whole new planet called Bardotta named after Brigitte Bardot to serve as the main setting rather than use a familiar world to fuck over. The name of the planet was kept but they brought in the Phuii which feels like something Filoni would do since he likes taking "unused" concept art for alien designs despite that a Phuii did get a brief appearance in TPM despite his larger scene being deleted.
7: JW Rinzler wrote a novel called All Up which is a fictionalized version of the space race which will be receiving its first paperback and audiobook in August and September, and it has an SW easter egg. This might be related to Bongiorno's Supernatural Encounters story which will also be getting released around the same time.
8: Someone asks him a dumb question and then he waxes nostalgia and blabbers on about his fellow authors, experiences, meetings, licensings, etc...
9: He closes the video by mentioning how appreciative he was of George and everyone at old Lucasfilm, and that George was very creative, always going into a lot of details on aliens, planets, myths, etc, and JW apologizes that he couldn't do more for fans during these times but it seems like he might make more of these videos in the future.
10: Expect Doomcock to cover none of this.
And that's that...
With that out of the way, I'm going to assume the thread's calmed down enough now that I can probably continue the cosmic shitpost. If anyone doesn't remember the info too well or if there are new arrivals who want to know what the fuck I'm talking about, I can link the previous pages again if needed.
