Last Jedi Left Out Wilhelm Scream
A long-standing Star Wars tradition is being retired. The famous Wilhelm scream wasn’t featured in The Last Jedi and it sounds like it won’t be used in Solo: A Star Wars Story, nor can we expect to hear this staple of the franchise anymore in the future. Love it or hate it, the Wilhelm scream has been a part of the Star Wars franchise since the very beginning, so this is at the very least a relatively significant change when it comes to tradition. The news comes to us courtesy of Star Wars supervising sound editor Matthew Wood who revealed that the famous sound effectwas not used in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which marks the first time in the history of the beloved sci-fi series that we haven’t heard someone belt out the distinctive scream. So why the change? According to Wood, it’s like Kylo Ren says; “It’s time to let the past die.” Here’s what Wood had to say about it. “In this movie, we decided to move from the Wilhelm scream. We’re letting the past die, as Kylo Ren says.” For those unfamiliar, the Wilhelm scream has been used in nearly 400 movies over the years, including every Star Wars movie through 2015’s The Force Awakens. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, like The Last Jedi, is Wilhelm-free. The effect made its debut in 1951’s Distant Drums, in which, a character is eaten by a crocodile and lets out the now famous scream as it’s happening. However, the scream really took off two years later when it was re-used in The Charge at Feather River. A character by the name of Wilhelm takes an arrow to the leg and lets out the scream. Hence, the name.
Michael B. Jordan in New Fahrenheit 451
Men in Black Spin off has Director
F. Gary Gray is the choice to direct the Men In Black film that will relaunch the franchise for Sony and Amblin. Negotiations are underway toward a deal. Gray is enjoying a mid-career trajectory that began with Straight Outta Compton, and then extended most recently to the third highest global grossing film of 2017, The Fate Of The Furious. The film grossed $1.2 billion. Men in Black has a script by Iron Man scribes Matt Holloway & Art Marcum and the studio greenlit the picture on their draft. Sony, which is coming off a big hit in reviving the Jumanji franchise, is hungry for more and the studio has set a June 14, 2019 release date. Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald are back as producers and Steven Spielberg is exec producing. Sony and Amblin have been trying to figure out the best way to relaunch the series, after the original pairing of Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith ran its course in the 2012 third installment. The attempts included a spinoff film that would meld Sony’s 21 Jump Street cast members Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill into an extraterrestrial spinoff. This film isn’t that one. Rather, it is a spinoff grounded in the original premise, of a covert force policing the alien population hiding in plain sight, the premise of the comic book series by Lowell Cunningham and Sandy Carruthers.
Wauconda, Il is not Wakanda
Wakanda may be a fictional East African nation, but there’s a town in Illinois that sounds exactly like the Black Panther setting. It’s called Wauconda, and it’s suddenly getting a lot of attention thanks to fans of the record-breaking film starring Chadwick Boseman. A small village in Lake County, IL, real-life Wauconda is not filled with superheroes and vibranium. But people are having fun with the connection, and Wauconda residents, from barbers to cashiers, are dressing up in Black Panther masks. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Alise Homola, the executive assistant to Wauconda’s mayor, has been receiving phone calls, and she hasn’t seen the film. She said, “Someone called and asked how we pronounced the village name and when I told him, he began yelling, ‘Wakanda forever!’ which I am guessing is from the film.” The whole thing is pretty hilarious, and we’re cracking up at all the tweets.
